Preamble

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

EDINBURGH MERCHANT COMPANY ENDOWMENTS (AMENDMENT) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.

Read the Third time, and passed.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL WAR EFFORT

Women Civilian Clerks, Ordnance Depots

Mr. William Brown: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that female civilian clerks employed at Ordnance Depôts are being called up from that work under the National Service Acts, although Royal Army Ordnance Corps soldiers and Auxiliary Territorial Service personnel are doing precisely the same work in the same depôts; that the civilian girls, when called up, are being sent to other static establishments as Auxiliary Territorial Service personnel, being replaced in the original establishments by Auxiliary Territorial Service personnel or by untrained mobile civilians transferred from other work; and whether he will stop this waste of trained women-power?

The Minister of Labour (Mr. Ernest Bevin): The calling up of female civilian clerks in ordnance depôts is in accordance with the arrangement made for the Civil Service generally. This arrangement provides for the release of a proportion of women in the younger age groups with the provision, where necessary, of suitable civilian replacements. I understand that it is not the practice to post Auxiliary Territorial Service personnel to Ordnance depots as substitutes for civilians. They are used to replace soldiers, to provide additional staff where no civilian clerks are available, and to ensure mobility and

flexibility in the event of an emergency. I am not aware that untrained mobile civilians have been placed as substitutes, in these depots. If the hon. Member will send me details, I will make inquiries.

Young Men Workers (Home Guard)

Mr. Craik Henderson: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that young men employed on important war work, for over 72 hours per week, are being directed to join the Home Guard; whether he has considered the effect of this extra work on their health and will he alter the policy of his Department in this respect?

Mr. Bevin: No, Sir. If my hon. Friend is aware of any such cases and will communicate with me, I will have then investigated.

Mr. Craik Henderson: If there are cases of young men of 19 doing important work—I have sent particulars to the Minister—will the right hon. Gentleman give instructions that they shall not be asked to take up Home Guard duties, which would result in their doing their own job inefficiently?

Mr. Bevin: I would like to look at all the aspects of the question. If young men of this age are working 72 hours a week, it may be that their working hours are much too long.

Colonel Sir A. Lambert Ward: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that where men are doing 72 hours a week the Home Guard authorities are entitled to demand a further 12 hours a week training, and that as many of these men live considerable distances from their work and have to travel to and fro, it is placing upon them an absolutely intolerable burden?

Mr. Bevin: I have issued an advice—not an order, because it is difficult to apply in all cases—advising employers not to work people beyond 56 hours a week. Managements ought to co-operate, because the Home Guard is essential in case of danger.

Mr. Hannah: Do the Government realise the strain on elderly Members of this House belonging to the Home Guard?

Tyneside Shipyard Strike

Mr. Maxton: asked the Minister of Labour whether he has now made his


inquiries into the strike in the Tyneside shipyards; and whether he has any statement to make as a result?

Mr. Bevin: I have completed inquiries and have communicated with the representative body of the workers concerned. I do not think that any further action is necessary.

Mr. Maxton: Does the Minister intend to make any statement to the workers as a result of his inquiries?

Mr. Bevin: The dispute arose in connection with the unions responsible. I have communicated the result of the investigation to the parties, and they must deal with their members.

Mr. Maxton: Do I understand-that this strike was against the orders of the leaders?

Mr. Bevin: It was without their consent.

Mr. Maxton: Does the Minister think it is a fair way to treat these men to consent to the transfer of tens of thousands of pounds in workers' wages into the employers' banking account? Has he nothing to say to the men on that subject?

Mr. Bevin: This dispute arose out of an agreement made legitimately and properly between the unions and employers. If a dispute arises, I communicate with the parties concerned with the agreement. That is the only possible way the Ministry can act.

Ministry of Labour (Employees under 30)

Captain C. S. Taylor: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is now in a position to say how many men under 30 years of age are employed in all branches of his Department?

Mr. Bevin: On 20th October the number of men between 18 and 30 years of age employed in my Department was 825. Of these, 188 (some of them only recently registered) are awaiting call up; 203 have served in H.M. Forces in the present war and have been discharged; and 303 are either not legally liable to be called up or are in medical categories III and IV from which men are not being called up. Of the balance of 131, 122 are Factory Inspectors or others with technical or specialised qualifications, mainly instructors

at the Training Centres. Of the remaining 9, two are postponed on compassionate grounds leaving 7 in low categories not fit for combatant service to whom deferment has been granted on the recommendation of the Kennet Committee.

Captain Taylor: While thanking the Minister for his very satisfactory figures, may I ask whether the men discharged from the Services were discharged for, health reasons?

Mr. Bevin: Yes, Sir, they were all discharged for health reasons.

Domestic Servants

Sir Leonard Lyle: asked the Minister of Labour whether he can make any statement as to the extent to which aged, infirm and sick persons are being allowed to retain the services of at least one maid?

Mr. Bevin: The effect of current arrangements under the Registration for Employment Order and National Service Acts would be to postpone the calling up or withdrawal of the one domestic servant in such a household if there were no other able-bodied person available.

Sir L. Lyle: Is it not a fact that in many districts this is not actually taking place and that people are being left without their only retainer?

Mr. Bevin: The basis is in the latter part of any answer, namely, "in such a household if there were no other able-bodied person available."

Weaving Mill, Tayport (Workers)

Mr. Henderson Stewart: asked the Minister of Labour what steps were taken by his Department to survey the local position before assuring the President of the Board of Trade that, in the event of Messrs. Scott & Fife's weaving mill in Tayport being closed down there would be no difficulty for the workers so displaced in obtaining employment locally or in the near vicinity of Tayport; what alternative work he has designated for them, and where?

Mr. Bevin: The plans for the reconcentration of the jute industry, of which the proposal to close this mill is part, were considered carefully by my Department in consultation with the Board of Trade. The selection of this mill for closing was made on production grounds;


but after local inquiry by my Regional officers I informed my right hon. Friend that apart from those going into His Majesty's Forces, no difficulty was anticipated in placing the remainder in employment locally or in the near vicinity. Thus employment would be in Tayport itself or in Cupar and at a later stage in Dundee. In regard to the last named, it may be necessary to make certain temporary arrangements for the workpeople concerned until local employment becomes available.

Mr. Stewart: Is my right hon. Friend aware that information in Tayport is to the effect that employment will not be found for these people? Will he make careful inquiries into that position?

Mr. Bevin: I will look into it.

Engineering Cadet Corps

Mr. Frankel: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that the condition that entrants for the Engineering Cadet Corps must hold a school certificate renders ineligible boys who have chosen a technical education and entered the engineering industry at the usual age of 15; and whether he will make the entrance examination open to all boys who desire to make application, whether their education be elementary or secondary?

Mr. Bevin: I have decided that in order to be eligible a boy need not have taken the school certificate, provided that he has reached the necessary standard of knowledge of mathematics or general science or physics. The scheme does not cover boys already employed in engineering because its object is to reduce the demands of the Services upon the personnel of the industry; boys who become qualified for technical commissions while employed in the engineering industry have an opportunity to obtain such commissions.

Reinstated Workers (Wages)

Mr. Silkin: asked the Minister of Labour whether his attention has been drawn to the decision of the Court of Appeal on the 19th instant in the case of Docker v. Standard Telephones and Cables, Limited, the effect of which is that workers in scheduled undertakings for the purpose of the Essential Work

(General Provisions) Order, who successfully appeal against dismissal and are reinstated in their employment, are not entitled to wages for toe period between the date of their dismissal and that of their reinstatement; that this involves great hardship on workers and tends to render nugatory the right of appeal; and whether he will amend the Order so as to require employers to pay wages during the period in question?

Mr. Bevin: I have already amended the Essential Work (General Provisions) Order, to provide that where a worker has been dismissed from a scheduled undertaking for serious misconduct and his reinstatement is subsequently directed by the National Service officer, the worker shall, if otherwise qualified, be entitled to his guaranteed wage from the date of dismissal until he is reinstated. In the case to which the hon. Member refers, of which I have seen a report in the Press, the worker was not dismissed for serious misconduct but was discharged with the permission of the National Service officer. I do not think I could properly require employers to pay wages between discharge and reinstatement in cases where permission to discharge had been duly obtained.

Sir Herbert Williams: Does this ruling apply to people discharged from Government employment?

Mr. Bevin: It is exactly the same if they are employed on productive work.

Sir H. Williams: Would it apply in the case where a man succeeded on appeal and the Government Department declined to accept the direction of the Ministry of Labour?

Mr. Foster: Does it apply also to the mining industry?

Mr. Bevin: In the case of the mining industry there are some deviations from the general Order, and I cannot reply to my hon. Friend without notice.

Mr. Silverman: Will the Amendment to the Order apply retrospectively?

Mr. Bevin: The Order was made a long while ago.

Work Direction, Croydon

Sir H. Williams: asked the Minister of Labour whether his attention has been drawn to the case of a workman, whose


name has been supplied to him, directed from employment as engineer storekeeper with a firm in Croydon exclusively engaged on war-work, wages £5 15s. a week, to work of a lower grade with a Royal Air Force maintenance unit, wages £3 15s. per week, that he and a number of others spent the night in an unheated hall; whether he will state his wage policy in the matter of directing labour; and whether steps will in future be taken to ensure that appropriate arrangements for-billeting will be made in such cases?

Mr. Bevin: I am having inquiries made into this case and will communicate with my hon. Friend as soon as these are completed.

Sir H. Williams: Will the Minister deal also with the question of principle?

Mr. Bevin: I will look into that.

Sir Irving Albery: Will the inquiries cover only the matter mentioned in the last part of the Question, or will they cover also the difference in wages?

Mr. Bevin: They will cover both points, but I would remind the hon. Gentleman that it was this House which laid down in an Act that the transfer had to be at the rate for the job.

Sir I. Albery: Will the Minister also have inquiries made into the cases to which I have drawn his attention?

Mr. Bevin: Certainly.

Blind Persons

Lieutenant-Commander Joynson-Hicks: asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that many blind persons, anxious to participate in the war effort, are debarred from fitting themselves to do so as it would involve the loss of their disability pension when the present urgent need for their services is ended; and what steps it is proposed to take to enable the services of these blind persons to be utilised in the war effort?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Miss Horsbrugh): Sickness and disablement benefits under the National Health Insurance Acts are payable if and so long as the claimant satisfies his approved society that he is rendered incapable of work by some

specific disease or bodily or mental disablement. It follows that the blind persons to whom my hon. and gallant Friend refers can only become entitled to these benefits after they cease to be employed if they can then satisfy their societies that they are incapable of work.

Lieutenant-Commander Joynson-Hicks: Will the Minister consider transferring these cases from the approved societies to the Post Office scheme, so that blind persons would be able to resume their disability pensions after concluding their war work?

Miss Horsbrugh: My right hon. Friend would not have any power to do that, and I think I have made it plain in the answer that if they are incapable of work they will then get a pension.

Oral Answers to Questions — SEAMEN'S CLUBS

Mr. Thorne: asked the Minister of Labour whether he can give any information about the seamen's club at Liverpool; how many hours the club will be open each day; whether the club will be open to all the seamen that arrive in Liverpool; who is to control the club; who has paid for furnishing the club; and whether it is the intention of the Seamen's Welfare Centre to open other clubs in other big seaport towns?

Mr. Bevin: The Ocean Club, Liverpool, which opened on 31st October, 1942, was set up by the Liverpool Seamen's Welfare Centre and is under its control. The Liverpool Seamen's Welfare Centre was established with the agreement of the Liverpool Port Welfare Committee, and its funds are derived from voluntary contributions, mainly from shipowners, together with a grant from the Exchequer. The club is open continuously day and night to all members of the British Merchant Navy and of the Merchant Navies of all foreign States with which His Majesty is not at war. Merchant Navy clubs of similar type managed by the National Service; Hostels Corporation Limited have been, or are being, set up in other ports in accordance with the advice of the Seamen's Welfare Board.

Mr. Thorne: Thank you very much for that information.

Oral Answers to Questions — CATERING TRADES (LEGISLATION)

Mr. Mander: asked the Minister of Labour when it is proposed to introduce the necessary legislation to put into effect the Government's reforms of the catering trades conditions of employment?

Mr. Bevin: This Bill is in active preparation, but I am not yet able to give the date of introduction.

Mr. Mander: Will the Minister bear in mind that any failure to introduce this necessary scheme of reform will give rise to acute controversy?

Mr. Bevin: I can assure my hon. Friend that there will be no failure.

Sir John Mellor: Does the Minister now recognise that this proposal has nothing to do with the war?

Mr. Bevin: I recognise that when you are in a war you have to prepare for peace.

Squadron-Leader Peter Macdonald: Does the Minister recognise also that a very definite pledge was given to this House by the late Leader of the House, on behalf of the Government, to the effect that no controversial legislation would be introduced during this Session?

Mr. Bevin: I am very happy to say that there is no party controversy on this at all.

Mr. De la Bère: The facts are otherwise.

Oral Answers to Questions — INTERNATIONAL LABOUR CONVENTIONS (INDIGENOUS WORKERS)

Mr. Edmund Harvey: asked the Minister of Labour whether any decision has been reached by the Government regarding ratification of the two Inter national Labour Conventions concerning the regulation of written contracts of employment of indigenous workers and concerning penal sanctions for breaches of contracts of employment by indigenous workers?

Mr. Bevin: Yes, Sir, the Government propose to ratify both Conventions. Copies of a White Paper which gives information in regard to the territories to which the Conventions are applied will be available to Members in the Vote Office after Questions.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARMED FORCES (PENSIONS AND GRANTS)

Mr. John Dugdale: asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is satisfied that Army officers and men are fully conversant with their rights under the scheme of war service grants, in view of the fact that less than 700,000 have applied?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions (Mr. Paling): I am satisfied that wide publicity has been given to the scheme of War Service Grants, and that no one should be unaware of his rights under the Scheme. The measures taken include repeated broadcasts, press conferences, lectures to welfare officers and troops. There has also been an extensive distribution of posters and leaflets, and a special explanatory slip was inserted in the recent issue of family allowance books, so that the serving man's wife would also know when and how to apply for a grant.

Mr. Dugdale: Will the hon. Gentleman consider consulting the Secretary of State for War with a view to seeing that all platoon commanders may instruct their men on this particular matter?

Mr. Paling: If this would help, I should be quite willing to do it.

Captain Sir Ian Fraser: asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is now able to announce that he will raise the rates of pensions and allowances paid to officers, non-commissioned officers and men, disabled in this war and their de pendants, to the comparable rates for great war cases?

The Minister of Pensions (Sir Walter Womersley): I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to my reply to his similar Question on 23rd April. There has been no material change in the cost of living figure since the rates of pension applicable to the present war were last increased.

Sir I. Fraser: Is my right hon. Friend aware that since he last increased these pensions by a very small amount, many working men have had a half-crown rise per shift or per day, and does he not think the time has come to give these pensioners a half-crown rise per week?

Sir W. Womersley: The Government made a definite pledge that if the cost-of-


living figure rose substantially these pensions would be increased. The figure on which the 1919 pensions were based was 215. At the present moment the figure is 00.

Mr. Bellenger: Has the right hon. Gentleman considered the anomaly which arises of ex-Service men drawing pensions at a higher rate, as a result of their disability in the last war, than those who are casualties in this war and who do not understand cost-of-living figures, but only understand that they are getting a smaller pension?

Sir W. Womersley: The Government had the right to decrease the old war pensions as and when the cost-of-living decreased. They did not exercise that right, and therefore, it is true that this has given the old pensioners an advantage.

Mr. Dobbie: asked the Minister of Pensions whether he has yet arrived at a decision as to the disregard of the increase in children's allowances when dependants of serving members of the Forces make applications for War Service Grants; if so, what is his decision; whether any reductions have yet taken place in cases where War Service Grants are in operation, since, and owing to the increase of the children's allowances; in how many instances has his Advisory Committee considered the question of raising the unit basis on which grants are made; and is any action intended to be taken on the same?

Mr. Paling: I would ask the hon. Member to await the statement dealing with this and related matters to be made later in the proceedings by my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council.

Oral Answers to Questions — PENSIONS APPEAL TRIBUNALS

Major Milner: asked the Minister of Pensions on what date a request was made to the British Medical Association to provide medical men for pensions appeal tribunals; and with what result?

Sir W. Womersley: The Secretary of the British Medical Association acts also as Secretary of the Central Medical War Committee and in that capacity was formally consulted in regard to the medical requirements for the staffing of pensions appeal tribunals.

Major Milner: On what date?

Sir W. Womersley: I should require notice of that question.

Major Milner: In my Question I asked on what date such a request was made and with what result. Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the Question?

Sir W. Womersley: I cannot give the exact date, because we have applied several times. We are always applying and inquiring, and the answer has been that the personnel was not available.

Major Milner: Is it not a fact that the right hon. Gentleman has never made a single formal request to this Association for the provision of medical men?

Sir W. Womersley: No, it is not.

Major Milner: Then will the right hon. Gentleman say on what date the request was made?

Sir W. Womersley: I cannot give the date. That is a definite answer.

Major Milner: Will the right hon. Gentleman be in a position to give me the date next week?

Sir W. Womersley: I can give it to-day if the hon. and gallant Gentleman wants it.

Sir Francis Fremantle: Will my right hon. Friend take it from me that the British Medical Association say that they have received no such request?

Major Milner: asked the Minister of Pensions on what date was a request made or a direction given to the Medical Personnel Priority Committee to provide medical men for pensions appeal tribunals; and with what result?

Sir W. Womersley: I consulted the Medical Personnel (Priority) Committee on 24th October, 1941.

Major Milner: While admitting that it is extremely difficult, is it not a fact that since that date, nor indeed at any time, has the right hon. Gentleman made a formal request for the provision of medical personnel?

Sir W. Womersley: No, Sir. I am keeping in close touch with the Service Departments, and in the case of every medical officer who is discharged from the Departments, I take into consideration whether


he will be suitable for this work or not. I am constantly reviewing the position, day by day.

Sir I. Fraser: Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the B.B.C. to invite medical men to apply for these jobs?

Sir W. Womersley: I have advertised in the medical Press, and I have had a certain number of replies. If the hon. and gallant Member saw the comments alongside the applications after I have made my inquiries, he would know exactly the difficult position I am in.

Sir I. Fraser: Does that mean that my right hon. Friend wants to handpick these men?

Sir F. Fremantle: asked the Minister of Pensions what steps he has taken with the Central Medical War Committee to find out what medical men are available and suitable for service on the proposed pensions tribunals?

Sir W. Womersley: The Central Medical War Committee was consulted by the Medical Personnel (Priority) Committee when the latter body was asked to consider the availability of medical men for pensions appeal tribunals.

Sir F. Fremantle: Does my right hon. Friend know that at a meeting of the Committee last Friday, at which I was present, they said they had had no applications whatever, and that the Secretary of the Priority Committee also told me so?

Sir W. Womersley: I have given my answer, and it is correct, whatever my hon. Friend's information may be.

Sir F. Fremantle: Will my right hon. Friend make a definite application to the Central Medical War Committee to ask them if they will make inquiries as regards all the men who are constantly being turned out of the Services and many of whom would be very useful in this way?

Sir W. Womersley: I am quite willing to receive applications from anyone or to consult with anyone, and if my hon. Friend has the names of any medical men to submit to me, I shall be very pleased.

Sir F. Fremantle: Will my right hon. Friend make a definite application to the Secretary to make inquiries?

Oral Answers to Questions — INDIA

Advisory Committee (Indian Representation)

Mr. Mander: asked the Secretary of State for India whether he will consider increasing Indian representation on his Advisory Committee?

The Secretary of State for India (Mr. Amery): Of my eight Advisers three are Indians. Perhaps my honourable Friend is not aware that by Statute at least half must have completed, not more than two years before their appointment, at least 10 years' service under the Crown in India; and their selection is made, naturally, with regard to the nature of such service.

Mr. Mander: Would it not be possible to alter the Statute?

Detained Indian Leaders (Correspondence)

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for India whether correspondence from private persons in this country can be sent and delivered to Indian leaders now detained; whether those leaders are or will be permitted to communicate with private persons in this country and whether they will be permitted to make any public declaration?

Mr. Amery: I understand that the detained Indian leaders are permitted to correspond only with members of their families and then only on domestic matters. I cannot say when the present restrictions will be relaxed. Whether any public declaration by the leaders could be permitted would presumably depend on its character.

Mr. Sorensen: Would it be possible for Members of the House to communicate with the Indian leaders either after submission to my right hon. Friend or through him?

Mr. Amery: That is covered by my answer. The matter is in the discretion of the Government of India.

Mr. Sorensen: Will the right hon. Gentleman take steps to see if it is possible?

Armed Forces (Tobacco Duty)

Major-General Sir Alfred Knox: asked the Secretary of State for India for what reason it is not permitted to send cigarettes duty free to members of the Services serving in India?

Mr. Amery: When an arrangement was introduced in 1940 to permit of small parcels of duty-free tobacco, cigars or cigarettes being sent by post to members of His Majesty's Forces abroad, it was decided that this arrangement should not be applied to soldiers serving in India, as such parcels would be subject to local customs duty on arrival, and pipe-tobacco and cigarettes suitable to European tastes are plentiful in most parts of India, of good quality, and still no more expensive than before the war here. The Government of India have, however, been asked to consider the question further and I am awaiting their reply.

Oral Answers to Questions — CIVIL DEFENCE

Fire Prevention

Mr. W. Brown: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can make a statement as to the present policy of his Department in regard to the enrolment of enemy aliens for fire-watching purposes?

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Herbert Morrison): Aliens of enemy nationality are permitted to undertake fire-guard duties as volunteers in suitable cases. They are not subject to the compulsory provisions in the Fire Prevention Orders.

Major Petherick: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind the very great danger involved, and will he also recollect the frightful examples in the Low Countries of persons who were believed to be perfectly friendly but who, when the Germans marched in, were found to be very much otherwise?

Mr. Morrison: That point is always kept in mind. Indeed, I have been criticised for keeping it too much in mind.

Miss Rathbone: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm the fact that there are very few enemy aliens loose in this country, and that those who are loose have been passed through a hair sieve?

Mr. Morrison: I think that is much too wide a generalisation.

Mr. Purbrick: asked the Home Secretary on what grounds he proposes to prohibit one person, after doing his own fire-watching duties, voluntarily relieving another?

Mr. Morrison: I am not proposing to institute any such prohibition, but to check abuse I propose in the forthcoming Order to include a provision establishing a record of substitutes which will be open to inspection by the local authority or the appropriate authority for the premises.

Mr. Ellis Smith: asked the Home Secretary whether he is aware of the effect on production of the additional strain of fire-watching on people who have given the maximum output for two, three or four years, increased by the geographical situation of many establishments, causing workpeople to travel two and three hours a day in addition to their working hours; that in one area men and women who leave home at 6.30 a.m. and return at 8 p.m. are being called upon to do fire-watching, including a lady working these hours with a child one year old; and if he will reconsider the policy as applied to the industrial workers and issue advice to the workpeople stating clearly their duties and rights?

Mr. Morrison: I recognise that fire prevention is in a number of cases a burden on those concerned, but it is a duty which must be discharged by the people of this country to repel attacks by fire. There is a special provision in the Orders by which exemption may be granted to men regularly engaged on vital work for exceptionally long hours in industrial premises, and to women regularly engaged on work for exceptionally long hours. Any worker who considers his or her case is such that it would be an exceptional hardship to be required to perform fire prevention duties is entitled to apply to a tribunal for exemption. Any woman with a child of under 14 living with her is entirely exempt.

Mr. Smith: Has my right hon. Friend considered the advisability of issuing a circular setting out clearly the duties and rights of the workpeople?

Mr. Morrison: Very clear advice has been issued as to their duties and equally clear advice as to their rights. Moreover, the trade union organisations represented on my Advisory Council have themselves issued very clear advice to their members. I do not think my hon. Friend need be under any misapprehension on the point.

Regional Commissioners

Mr. Maxton: asked the Home Secretary whether, as the positions of Regional


Commissioners and their Deputies have now become unnecessary, their functions being now adequately performed by other branches of local and national organisations, he will consider abolishing these positions?

Mr. H. Morrison: I am unable to accept the hon. Member's suggestion that Regional Commissioners and their Deputies have become unnecessary or that their functions are being adequately performed by other branches of local and national organisations.

Mr. Maxton: The right hon. Gentleman knows better than I do, but can he tell me any functions performed by these men other than decorative?

Mr. Morrison: I recently made a comprehensive speech about their functions, of which I shall be glad to send the hon. Member a copy, and, when he has read it, I think he will be quite convinced that I am right.

Mr. Kirkwood: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the West of Scotland the Deputy Commissioner has not given up any of his activities or the position that he occupied before becoming Deputy Commissioner, and that he has since that accepted a post in Glasgow and is continuing his own private business?

Mr. Morrison: Scotland, as my hon. Friend knows, always involves exceptional considerations, and the organisation is somewhat different there, but I should not think in the case of a Deputy District Commissioner he would undertake duties inconsistent with the responsibilities that he owes to the Regional organisation.

Mr. Kirkwood: They stopped travel vouchers for the workers as the result of the blitz, and we have had nothing but discontent on the Clyde as a result.

National Fire Service

Mrs. Tate: asked the Home Secretary whether he will undertake that the hours of duty in the National Fire Service shall not be increased to 48 on and 24 off, except where amenities and conditions justify the change?

Mr. H. Morrison: Yes, Sir. I have repeatedly stated that instructions have been given that the standard duty system is not to be introduced, or, if introduced,

is not to be maintained at any stations where the accommodation is seriously defective.

Sir H. Williams: Is it not generally true that the people who have been working the 48 on and 24 off system prefer it and that the objection comes from those who have not tried it?

Mr. Morrison: I think that that is true. Even in areas where there has been controversy the service have in a large proportion of cases come to like it after it has been experienced.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: Is my right hon. Friend aware that a deputation from Yorkshire came to the House and made definite statements and allegations concerning the absence of accommodation such as he has referred to?

Mr. Morrison: Their remedy is perfectly simple, without coming from Yorkshire to London. Many deputations come to this House and make inaccurate observations to Members.

Mrs. Cazalet Keir: Will my right hon. Friend do his best to expedite the provision of certain amenities reaching fire stations?

Mr. Morrison: I can assure my hon. Friend that I am very anxious to do that. Indeed, I have been visiting fire stations all over the country. We are in difficulties about materials and labour, but we are doing all we can. I am anxious that the men should co-operate by helping themselves to get the work done, and they are doing it.

Emergency Water Tanks

Mr. Ammon: asked the Home Secretary whether he is now in a position to make any statement in regard to the protection of emergency water tanks?

Mr. H. Morrison: Yes, Sir. To make it more difficult for children to get themselves into danger, basins will, as soon as the work can be carried out, be surmounted by a ring of barbed wire fitted on stanchions. Where the walls of brick or masonry tanks have flat tops there will be added a pointed coping above which the ring of barbed wire will be placed. I hope these measures will be effective. Much direct damage has been done to static water tanks in many parts of the country, and moreover they have been


used as dumps for rubbish, including much valuable salvage. A new Defence Regulation has, therefore, been made under which it is an offence to throw things into, or climb on, them, or to interfere with pipes, valves, etc. These water supplies are of first-rate importance to our war effort, and I should welcome the co-operation of all hon. Members in impressing upon the public the urgent importance of not interfering with them or in any way diminishing their usefulness.

Mr. Sorensen: Would it not be much simpler, as is the case in many parts of the country, to cover these receptacles with metal mesh?

Mr. Morrison: We tried that experiment, but within an hour children were dancing on it, and one of them fell through.

Mr. Thorne: Is it not very dangerous to have barbed wire round these tanks? In West Ham we have netting two feet round the outside walls, and there has been no injury.

Mr. Morrison: I am glad to hear that that is the case in West Ham. We have thought carefully about this, and the Parliamentary Secretary has made an examination. We thought that barbed wire would be effective, and I should have thought that children would not wish to be mixed up with barbed wire; but here I am in a dilemma, for it is a choice between children tearing their clothes on the wire and getting drowned. I think that on the whole the first is the lesser risk to take.

Oral Answers to Questions — FREE PARDON (FIREMAN, SHEFFIELD)

Mr. Cecil Wilson: asked the Home Secretary of State whether a copy of the Warrant under the Royal Sign Manual for a free pardon is sent to the person most concerned or only when the person asks for it; why, in the case of Fireman Spink, of Sheffield, whose conviction was upon the court and police records, whose finger prints and photograph were held by several police forces, no intimation of the free pardon was received by the Sheffield court or police until two months after the warrant has been signed, so that the conviction remained upon the records; and whether this is the usual practice when a free pardon is granted?

Mr. H. Morrison: With regard to the first part of the Question, it has not been the invariable practice to send a copy of a free pardon to the person concerned, but a copy was sent to Fireman Spink as soon as it was known that he wished to have it. With regard to the second part of the Question, a notification was sent to the clerk to the justices as soon as it had been decided to recommend the grant of a free pardon. In the course of subsequent inquiries it was discovered that this notification had never been received, and a copy was at once sent to the clerk to the justices. The first communication was on 15th May and the second on 21st July.

Mr. Wilson: In a case where very grave injustice has been done and a free pardon is granted, should it not be granted in the most generous, frank way possible and not merely because it is asked for?

Mr. Morrison: There is no lack of frankness about it, but there is point in what my hon. Friend says, and I have given instructions that a copy of the pardon shall be sent in each case.

Mr. Wilson: In sending a pardon that has been asked for, is it in accordance with the dignity of the Crown and of this House that it should simply be signed by a typist—"Herbert Morrison"?

Mr. Morrison: I think my hon. Friend is wrong. My recollection is that I signed it personally by my right name, which is Herbert Morrison. I am talking about the one that I signed. I cannot sign a dozen. This is probably a copy. I will check it up, but my recollection is that I always sign these personally.

Mr. Rhys Davies: As it is admitted that this man was wrongly imprisoned, will my right hon. Friend look up precedents as to whether any solace can be given him?

Oral Answers to Questions — ADOPTION OF CHILDREN ACT, 1939

Mr. Mander: asked the Home Secretary whether he is now able to state his decision with reference to bringing into operation the Adoption of Children Act, 1939?

Mr. H. Morrison: My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State has received this week deputations on this matter from the principal child welfare organisations and also from the Woman-power


Committee. I propose to consider their representations before arriving at a decision.

Oral Answers to Questions — COAL INDUSTRY (DERMATITIS)

Mr. Henry White: asked the Home Secretary (1) the number of cases of dermatitis known to him as occurring in the coalmining industry in the years 1938, 1939, 1940 and 1941 respectively;
(2) the number of cases of dermatitis amongst coalminers for which compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Acts was paid in the years 1938, 1939, 1940 and 1941 respectively?

Mr. H. Morrison: The number of cases of dermatitis produced by dust or liquids certified by examining surgeons was 254 in 1938, 305 in 1939, 402 in 1940 and 571 in 1941, the last figure being provisional. The number of new cases in which compensation was paid in 1938 was 175. I regret that corresponding figures for later years are not available.

Mr. White: asked the Home Secretary what steps are being taken to ascertain whether or not the large number of cases of dermatitis among miners which are being deemed by medical referees to be of a non-occupational nature, thereby depriving the sufferers of payments under the Workmen's Compensation Acts are, in fact, attributable to the nature of their employment?

Mr. Morrison: No representations have been made to me in regard to the cases mentioned by my hon. Friend. The decision as to whether the workman is disabled by a particular disease included in the Schedule (in this case dermatitis produced by dust or liquids) rests with the medical referee, and I have no power of review, but if my hon. Friend will furnish me with particulars as to the class of case he has in mind, I shall be glad to consider them.

Mr. White: I shall be glad to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions — CHARITABLE APPEALS

Mr. Keeling: asked the Home Secretary the result of his consideration of the question of requiring persons who make charitable appeals by circular or advertisement to be registered?

Mr. H. Morrison: Since my hon. Friend raised this matter in the Question which he put to me last June further restriction has been placed on charitable appeals by Defence Regulation 79D, which prohibits any appeal outside the United Kingdom except with my permission. While I am aware of the considerations which my hon. Friend has in mind, the inquiries which I have made do not show that the case for elaborating additional methods of control over charities is so strong or urgent as to justify at the present time measures which would impose additional duties on local and other authorities.

Mr. Keeling: Can my hon. Friend explain why the British public should enjoy less protection against bogus British charities than Americans and foreigners do under this new Regulation?

Mr. Morrison: There were reasons related to the relations between this country and foreign States. Moreover, it was a fairly simple thing to administer. If we were to impose control of every charity in this country I know from personal experience in the London County Council that the clerical and investigating work entailed on local authorities would be very big. After all, the public must think for themselves up to a point before they contribute to charities.

Oral Answers to Questions — ELECTORAL REFORM (COMMITTEE'S REPORT)

Mr. Riley: asked the Home Secretary how soon the Report of the Committee on Electoral Reform is likely to be presented to Parliament?

Mr. H. Morrison: Allowing for the time required for printing, I hope this report will be in the hands of Members within the next fortnight or three weeks. One of the appendices will not be printed, but it will be made available to Members in the Library.

Mr. Shinwell: Has my right hon. Friend given any authority to political organisations or any other body to prepare schemes relating to electoral reform?

Mr. Morrison: No, Sir. There is nothing to prevent political bodies acting on their own, but I have not given them any authority or made any request.

Mr. Shinwell: Are we to understand that any such schemes are entirely unofficial?

Mr. Morrison: Yes, Sir.

Mr. George Griffiths: Have not registration officers had some instructions about getting ready for an election almost immediately after Christmas?

Mr. Morrison: Not so far as I know, and I hope that I should have as early notice as anybody.

Sir F. Fremantle: Does not my right Friend agree that every Member should have a copy of this Report?

Oral Answers to Questions — PEDAL CYCLES (LIGHTING)

Commander King-Hall: asked the Home Secretary whether he has any further statement to make concerning the improvement of lighting facilities for pedal cycles?

Mr. H. Morrison: The position is that while a new mask has been designed it has not so far been possible to release the necessary supplies of material and labour from tasks which are judged more urgent.

Mr. Craven-Ellis: Will my right hon. Friend give instructions to police authorities to pay more attention to cyclists who are riding after lighting-up time without lights?

Mr. Morrison: Cyclists are a delicate subject, but I will consider that.

Oral Answers to Questions — WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION

Mr. Tinker: asked the Home Secretary whether he is aware of the feeling among Lancashire miners over the application of the bonus award last week to partial compensation men on light work when the award of 3d. per shift reduced their partial compensation by 9d. per week; and will he consider amending the Workmen's Compensation Act so as not to reduce compensation when an increase in wages is made?

Mr. H. Morrison: Discussions have been taking place with the representative bodies concerned with a view to meeting the situation mentioned by my hon. Friend. I hope to be in a position to make a further announcement very shortly.

Mr. Tinker: I am glad to hear that, because this action on the part of employers and insurance companies is about the meanest and most niggardly I have heard of. They are getting the miners to increase output, and when the time for the payment of compensation comes, they are making harsh decisions.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION

Instruction in Citizenship

Mr. Ivor Thomas: asked the President of the Board of Education whether the Board has issued, or is prepared to issue, suggestions to teachers how best they can put before their pupils at an appropriate age the democratic ideals for which we are fighting and so prepare the children in our schools for their responsibilities as citizens?

The President of the Board of Education (Mr. Butler): The Board have emphasised repeatedly in the Handbook of Suggestions to Teachers and elsewhere the importance of inculcating in pupils a sense of their responsibility as citizens. They have information that a large number of schools are already giving regular training in various ways, and they are satisfied that the most appropriate method of imparting the instruction is a matter best left to the discretion of those responsible for the administration and teaching in the schools. I would also refer the hon. Member to a reply to a Question on 19th March, 1941, a copy of which I am sending him.

Dr. Russell Thomas: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that there are many different definitions of democratic ideals?

Mr. Sorensen: Is the right hon. Gentleman linking up this matter with the consideration he is giving to religious and ethical instruction in schools, as democracy is intimately linked up with these two principles?

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir, I bear all these matters in mind.

Teachers' Pensions

Mr. John Dugdale: asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware of the dissatisfaction felt by the teaching profession at the failure of the Government to raise the pensions of


retired teachers to compensate them for the rise in prices; and will he now consider doing this?

Mr. Butler: The general question of increasing teachers' pensions to compensate for the higher cost of living is part of a larger question affecting pensioners of all classes. I have nothing to add to what was said on this matter by my right hon. and gallant Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on the Motion for the Adjournment on 15th October last.

Mr. Sorensen: Is not the President himself taking this matter into consideration and making some representations on the subject?

Mr. Butler: I always do my best to look after the interests of teachers.

Rural Subjects (Instruction)

Captain Studholme: asked the President of the Board of Education whether his attention has been drawn to the suggestion of the Somerset County Council that in rural areas post-primary schools should have sufficient ground attached to have a garden and demonstration plots and that children should be encouraged to take an interest in livestock; whether he will do everything possible to encourage similar proposals throughout the country; and whether he will instruct local education authorities to give special consideration to applicants with a knowledge of agriculture and an interest in country life when appointing teachers in rural schools?

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir. In the volume of Suggestions for Public Elementary School Planning issued by the Board in 1936 the suggestions of the Somerset County Council were anticipated, and during the war my Department has circulated to the schools a number of pamphlets on aspects of school gardening and the keeping of livestock such as poultry, rabbits and pigs. The Board have also continued, with the co-operation of Local Education Authorities, to hold teachers courses in rural subjects in different parts of the country. I have no reason to think that local education authorities are not fully alive to the importance of appointing to rural schools teachers with an interest in country life and pursuits.

Religious Instruction

Mr. Sorensen: asked the President of the Board of Education from how many elementary, central and secondary schools for which county or borough authorities are responsible the scholars are withdrawn periodically for religious instruction in another building; and whether this procedure has been under consideration during recent discussions or negotiations?

Mr. Butler: My Department has no records which would enable me to answer the first part of the Question. As regards the second part, the provisions of Section 13 of the Education Act, 1936, for the withdrawal of children from public elementary schools for religious instruction of a kind not given in the school have been considered in recent discussions in common with the other statutory provisions relating to religious instruction.

Mr. Sorensen: Has the President no record of instances covered by the first part of the Question which have occurred in Sussex and Surrey, and could he not at least make inquiries to see whether this practice has spread to other parts?

Mr. Butler: I have answered Questions put by the hon. Member on the subject of a case in Sussex. We know of that one, and we know, I think, of one or two other cases not exactly similar, but I have no complete record such as would satisfy the hon. Member's request.

Mr. Hannah: Cannot this be left to the local education authorities?

Mr. Sorensen: No.

Mr. Hannah: Yes.

Reform

Mr. Liddall: asked the President of the Board of Education whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that there is a shortage of operative man-power in this country and a surplus of people of administrative and executive experience, as a result of which the Appointments Board is now offering manual work to people of executive and administrative experience; and what steps he proposes to take in connection with the reform of our educational system to take account of this development?

Mr. Butler: I understand that the circumstances to which my hon. Friend


refers are due to the fact that the intake into the Government service and war industries of persons with managerial, administrative and executive experience is not sufficient to offset the number of persons whose services in those capacities are no longer required as the result of the closure or curtailment of other industrial and commercial enterprises. The present situation is therefore largely due to war conditions. I am ready to take account of all relevant factors in considering the reform of the educational system.

Sir H. Williams: Do I understand that answer to mean that' the nation uses more brains in peace-time than in war-time?

Mr. Butler: That is not my concern.

Oral Answers to Questions — SERVICE PAY AND ALLOWANCES (INCREASES)

Captain C. S. Taylor: asked the Lord President of the Council whether he has any further statement to make on the subject of Service pay and allowances and the many anomalies that still exist?

Mr. Hutchinson: asked the Lord President of the Council whether he is able to make any statement regarding the conditions under which the additional allowance of 3s. 6d. per week is made to Service men's families resident in the London area?

The Lord President of the Council (Sir John Anderson): With your permission, Sir, I proposed to make a statement in reply to these Questions at the end of Questions.

At the end of Questions:

Sir J. Anderson: rose—

Sir H. Williams: On a point of Order. With regard to the statement now about to be made, I understand that certain copies have already been distributed to private Members. I want to ask whether it is not a breach of Privilege for copies to be so distributed.

Mr. Speaker: It has not come to my notice that that has been done.

Sir H. Williams: It is within my knowledge that there is a copy on this very Bench. The Department which is responsible for distributing this document

ought to state to this House how copies have got out in advance of the statement.

Captain Taylor: I tabled this Question, Mr. Speaker, and I have not been given a previous answer. I do not know whether answers are floating around, but I have not received any.

Commander Sir Archibald Southby: Is it in Order for replies to Questions which have been put on the Paper by Members, or statements made in lieu of those replies, to be given to other Members of this House before the Question is answered?

Mr. Speaker: I am not clear what the hon. and gallant Gentleman has in mind.

Sir A. Southby: What I have in mind, Mr. Speaker, is this: Is it in Order, when an hon. Member has put a Question on the Order Paper, for the Answer to that Question, or for a statement which is to be made in lieu of the answer to that Question, to be given to other Members of this House before the Question is, in fact, answered on the Floor of the House?

Mr. Maxton: This issue is rather important. Why should an hon. Member, because he happens to be sitting next to the Leader of the Opposition, be able to raise this issue?

Sir J. Anderson: It may perhaps be convenient if I say at the outset that, in view of the fact that I was proposing to deal to-day in the House with representations that had been made to me by a deputation, I thought it courteous last night to address two letters to hon. Members who had taken a leading part in those proceedings. I communicated by those letters, not the exact text of what I was going to say, but a statement giving the substance of what I was going to say. I thought it was only right that I should do so, as a matter of courtesy. The hon. Members to whom I addressed my letters were my hon. Friend the Member for The High Peak (Mr. Molson), to whom I wrote in the absence of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chippenham (Colonel Cazalet), who led the deputation, and the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) who attended with the deputation but who left with me a separate memorandum. Those letters were written last night.

Sir H. Williams: Where does the other copy come from? To my knowledge, a copy of the statement is on this Bench.

Mr. A. Bevan: There may be unusual circumstances connected with this matter, but is it not very improper? If such a practice were extended, hon. Members might have advance notice of Government policy. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that a rebuke from you is proper, in the circumstances.

Mr. Speaker: All this shows how easy it is to offend the susceptibilities of hon. Members.

Mr. Bellenger: May I make a personal explanation, as my name has been mentioned? May I inform you, Sir, and the House that I have not yet received that communication?

Sir J. Anderson: In view of the importance of this subject, perhaps hon. Members will not mind if I take up a few minutes of their time. As promised, His Majesty's Government have given careful consideration to the representations made by hon. Members in the course of the Debate on the pay and allowances of members of the Forces which took place on 10th September; in addition, the late Lord Privy Seal and myself have since received a deputation of Members of the House, which raised a number of further questions on this subject. As a result of a comprehensive review of the matters raised both in the House and by the deputation, His Majesty's Government have decided to introduce a number of special war-time modifications and improvements in Service conditions.
On one of the subjects concerned an announcement has already been made. The Secretary of State for War gave particulars to the House on 10th November of improved conditions in regard to acting and temporary rank. The further changes which I now have to announce fall under four main heads. The first concerns rates of pay of junior commissioned officers in the Navy. Improvements in the pay of naval acting sub-lieutenants and sub-lieutenants were announced by the then Lord Privy Seal on 10th September, to take effect concurrently with the improved promotion of second lieutenants in the Army and pilot officers in the R.A.F. Rank for rank, however, the initial pay of junior naval officers remained lower than that for junior Army and R.A.F. officers, and the Government have come to the conclusion that the special features relating

mainly to differing promotion prospects, which justified these differences in peace time have lost their force in war conditions. They have therefore decided that the basic rates of acting sub-lieutenants, sub-lieutenants and lieutenants in the executive branch of the Navy shall be brought into line with the rates paid to the corresponding ranks of second-lieutenant, lieutenant and captain respectively in the Army. The full details of the new rates of certain incidental adjustments will be circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT. All of these pay changes will take effect on 1st December.
The second improvement which I have to announce relates to officers' outfit allowances. The present rates of allowance are normally £35 for the Army and £45 for the Navy and Air Force, the higher rate being intended to take account of the need for an additional suit of Service dress in the Navy and R.A.F. in place of the Army officers' battle dress. The Government have reviewed these rates, having regard to current prices and to the needs of newly commissioned officers, and have decided to increase them in each case by £10. They have also decided to raise the additional allowance given to officers required to equip themselves with tropical outfit from £5 to £10. These changes also will take effect on 1st December. The amount by which the outfit allowances in the women's Services require to be increased to meet current conditions is being reviewed separately and will be announced shortly.
The third improvement which the Government have now decided to make relates to expenses arising before the birth of a child. The Service codes differ from civilian wage systems in that they vary the remuneration of the serving man to take account of his personal domestic circumstances. Representations have been made in this House and elsewhere asking that this system should be extended by assisting the father in the Forces to meet the special expenses incurred prior to the birth of a child, just as an addition is made in respect of maintenance of the child after it is born. The Government have felt considerable sympathy with this suggestion, and after reviewing a number of possibilities they have decided to meet this particular need by an arrangement under which children's allowances will be payable to


the wives of soldiers, sailors and airmen at the appropriate rates by the Service authorities from a date three months before the expected date of birth of the child, instead of from the date of birth itself. Claims for allowances on this basis will, of course, have to be supported by medical certificates. Arrangements for giving effect to this change in the basis of children's allowances are now being worked out by the Service Departments with a view to their being put into force with effect from 1st December.
Finally, the Government have given careful consideration to representations which have been made concerning War Service Grants, and in particular concerning the effect on those grants of the recent increases in children's allowances. As hon. Members are aware, it has repeatedly been urged that the needs of the soldier's family should be met to the greatest possible extent by way of regulated allowances which are drawn irrespective of personal circumstanes, and that the War Service Grants machinery should be more strictly reserved for exceptional cases in which special supplementation is still necessary. The Government were influenced by this view when they decided to make considerable improvements in the rates of children's allowances from 1st October last. When the increased allowances were announced, it was explained that they would be taken into account as and when individual War Service Grants came to be reviewed. The Government have given very careful consideration indeed to the suggestions which have been made that they should modify this principle; they have come to the conclusion that they cannot do so. It seems to them that in assessing the need of individual families for supplementation of their Service allowances by reference to their special circumstances it is essential to take account of the actual amount of Service allowances received.
The Government have, however, reviewed the operation of the War Service Grants machinery in general, and have come to the conclusion that it is desirable to make a change in what is known as the minimum unit standard of 16s. The House is familiar with this standard, which was explained in Command Paper 6318, and is the minimum standard of maintenance, after reasonable commitments have been met, below which a

Serving man's family should not be allowed to fall during his service. It has been decided to raise the figure from 16s. to 18s. per unit, each child under the school-leaving age being, as hitherto, counted as a half unit. This new standard will affect chiefly the families of men on the lowest rates of pay or those who before enlistment were in receipt of low wages. Existing grants will accordingly be reviewed in the light both of the increased children's allowances and of the new unit standard, and any adjustments necessary will be made from the date when the individual case is dealt with. The process must of necessity be a lengthy one and will take several months to complete. No action will be necessary on the part of recipients of grants, and my right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions particularly asks that they should not write and ask when their grant will be reviewed and with what effect.
In many cases under the procedure which I have outlined grants will remain unchanged, in some they may be increased, in others there will be a reduction; but unless other factors have also to be taken into account, the amount of any reduction made will generally be less than the amount of the increases in childen's allowances. In regard to other matters raised, including the question of the special allowance to residents in the London postal district, referred to by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ilford (Mr. Hutchinson), the Government, after careful consideration, have not seen their way to make any change. The improvements announced to-day will, taken together, place a new charge of some £5,500,000 a year on the Exchequer, in addition to the major changes announced on 10th September which cost £43,000,000 a year.

Captain Taylor: While thanking my right hon. Friend for the very satisfactory answer which he has given in that statement, as there are bound to be points which Members will want to raise, and as it is difficult or inconvenient to raise them by way of Question and answer at the present time, may I ask whether the Government are prepared to allow a short time, either on the Motion for the Adjournment or on some other occasion, for a general discussion on the statement of my right hon. Friend?

Sir J. Anderson: That is not a matter primarily for me, but may I very respectfully suggest that it might be well for hon. Members to take a little time to consider the statement which I have made, and then perhaps communications might be opened through the usual channels in the sense suggested by my hon. and gallant Friend?

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: Will the right hon. Gentleman take steps to safeguard those officers who are in O.C.T.U. areas against exploitation by outfitters and tailors who may again increase the cost of clothing and take the £10 which has been granted to those officers through increased charges?

Sir J. Anderson: The Government recognise that this is a very important point, and they hope to be able to meet it by a very considerable' extension of the facilities that are now available to officers to obtain articles of outfitting and clothing at minimum rates through quartermasters' stores.

Major Milner: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman when either he or the Secretary of State for War will announce the simplification of the pay system which was promised in September?

Sir J. Anderson: Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman would put a Question to my right hon. Friend on that point.

Mr. Hutchinson: In view of the admitted anomalies which arise from the present restriction of the additional allowance of 3s. 6d. to the London postal area, will my right hon. Friend say upon what ground the Government have come to the conclusion that those anomalies should not now be remedied?

Sir J. Anderson: The view of the Government after careful consideration is that the special conditions in the Central London area which justified the special allowance now payable to families resident in the London postal district no longer apply. The allowance continues as a historical survival, but in the view of the Government there would be no justification for extending it further in the Greater London area.

Mr. Parker: Cannot the anomaly be removed by levelling up the rates paid to the wives of serving men for the whole country to that paid in the London postal district?

Mr. Mathers: The right hon. Gentleman has made reference to War Service Grants. Has no account been taken of the necessity for continuing the grant to the widow of a serving soldier in cases where the grant was made for a particular purpose?

Sir J. Anderson: As far as I recollect, that question was not raised by the deputation. The hon. Gentleman will perhaps allow me to make some inquiries and communicate with him.

Mr. Maxton: Am I right in calculating from the figures which the right hon. Gentleman has given that the concessions made to the Forces will amount roughly to £1 per man per annum?

Sir J. Anderson: I would not like to work out that sum on the spur of the moment, but the concessions are very substantial and go a long way to meet the representations which have been made.

Mr. Maxton: Did not the right hon. Gentleman mention a figure of £5,500,000?

Sir J. Anderson: I said £5,500,000 to be added to £43,000,000; and I would point out that it is not being given on a per capita basis.

Major Heilgers: When the Government are giving further consideration to this matter, will they take into consideration the financial disadvantage in which officers posted to the War Office are placed as compared with officers holding similar positions elsewhere?

Sir J. Anderson: I would be glad if my hon. Friend would give me particulars.

Major Markham: May I ask whether a further statement will be made on the question of anomalies in the pay of private soldiers? It is common knowledge that there are about 200 different rates of pay and that very often the man with the least risk gets the higher rate of pay. May we expect another statement in the near future on this point?

Sir J. Anderson: I cannot promise my hon. and gallant Friend another statement in the very near future, but I assure him that the Government are as anxious as any hon. Gentleman is to get rid of these anomalies as far as possible.

Mr. Bellenger: As it is obvious that we cannot hope to deal with this very comprehensive subject by means of


questions and answers, and as my right hon. Friend knows that suggestions of considerable substance were made by the deputation to which he has given no answer, may I ask the Leader of the House to consider the provision of time so that hon. Members can raise in the House matters on which my right hon. Friend has given no answer to-day?

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Eden): I think it would be wise to follow the suggestion which my right hon. Friend has already made and allow hon. Members time to examine these proposals, and then, if there is a general demand for a discussion of them, we can consider the position.

Mr. Keeling: May I ask the Lord President of the Council why the extra 6d. a day in the London postal area is not withdrawn if, as he has said, there is no justification for it?

Sir J. Anderson: The logical course would certainly have been to withdraw it, but the Government are very considerate in these matters.

Mr. Hutchinson: With regard to naval officers' pay, may we take it that the statement which my right hon. Friend has made refers to officers of the Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve?

Sir J. Anderson: My hon. and learned Friend will remember that I said that fuller details would be given in the Official Report. Perhaps he will be good enough to await them.

Following are the details referred to:

The rates for the three ranks will become 11s., 13s. and 16s. 6d. a day respectively, in place of the existing rates of 9s., 11s., and 13s. 6d. The rate for midshipmen will at the same time be raised from 5s. to 6s. 10d. a day. Corresponding improvements, details of which will be announced by the Admiralty, will be made in the rates of pay of officers in the Engineering, Accountant, and Royal Marine branches of the Navy. Further, a review of the relative position of junior commissioned ranks in the three Services generally has shown that lieutenants and captains in the Army are somewhat less favourably situated than the corresponding ranks in the other two Services in respect of increments of pay for length of service. It has, therefore, been decided

that the Army lieutenant shall receive an increment raising his pay from 13s. to 14s. 6d. a day after three years' commissioned service and the Army captain an increase from 16s. to 17s. 6d. a day after three years in the rank. A corresponding increment will be given to naval lieutenants after three years' service in the rank instead of after four years as at present. In order to preserve parity of treatment between flying personnel in the Fleet Air Arm and the R.A.F., it will be necessary to reduce the flying pay of acting sub-lieutenants from 6s. to 4s. a day and of midshipmen from 4s. 6d. to 4s. a day. Flying pay for sub-lieutenants and above will be unaffected.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE

Lorry Accident, Billericay

Mr. Thorne: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he can give any information about the three land women killed, and 14 injured, in a lorry at Billericay, Essex, on Tuesday, 10th November; and what compensation will be paid?

The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. R. S. Hudson): It is impossible at the moment to say what compensation will be payable in respect of the women killed and injured as a result of the accident on Monday, 9th November, until their representatives have formulated their claim. It is possible that action may be taken in the courts by the injured parties to establish both the question of liability and the amount of damages to which they may be entitled.

Workers' Green Battle-dress

Mr. De la Bère: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether, in connection with the supply of green battle-dress suits for agricultural workers, he is aware of the impossibility of procuring these in many small market towns throughout the country districts; and if he will confer with the President of the Board of Trade or appropriate Department with a view to taking some steps to allocate the supply of these more evenly throughout the country, so as to ensure a supply being available in every district?

Mr. Hudson: Green battle-dress suits for agricultural workers are at present scarce, but my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade assures


me that every effort has been made to distribute the limited supplies as evenly as possible throughout the country.

Mr. De la Bère: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there are many of these available in London and that the real difficulty is in the distribution from the centre to the rural areas?

Mr. Hudson: I am afraid that that is a matter for my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.

Hunt Establishments (Feeding-Stuffs)

Mr. John Dugdale: asked the Minister of Agriculture why it is considered necessary to allocate 47 tons of feeding-stuffs per month during the coming winter to hunt establishments?

Mr. Hudson: Rations are allowed for a small number of horses and hounds in hunt establishments so that fox hunting on a small scale can be carried on.

Mr. Dugdale: Is this done with a view to destroying foxes?

Mr. Hudson: Yes, Sir, to destroy foxes.

Mr. Dugdale: Is that the most economical form of doing it?

Drainage Schemes (Notification to Landlords)

Sir Stanley Reed: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether his attention has been drawn to a case, particulars of which were sent to him, where a war agriculture committee and a conservancy board, acting under the instructions of his Ministry, carried out costly drainage works without consultation with, or advice to, the landlords who will have to pay the cost; and whether he will discourage in the future any such use of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1940?

Mr. Hudson: I do not regard the two drainage schemes to which my hon. Friend refers as costly in relation to the area of land affected. The landowners concerned, who will be liable for half the cost, were duly notified before the work began. In my view the action taken was perfectly proper.

Sir S. Reed: Does the right hon. Gentleman approve of these works being carried out, although they may be necessary and useful, without the landowners

having even been notified that they are to be undertaken, especially when so many landowners are serving in the Forces?

Mr. Hudson: This particular scheme was not carried out before the landowners were notified. In any case authority to take that action was given me by this House in an Act passed last year.

Pigs (Raw Swill)

Mr. Higgs: asked the Minister of Agriculture the penalty for feeding raw swill to pigs; and how many people have been prosecuted for the offence this year?

Mr. Hudson: Any person found guilty of feeding raw swill to pigs is liable to a fine not exceeding £50, or, if the offence is committed in respect of more than 10 animals, to a fine not exceeding £5 for each animal. It is the duty of local authorities to undertake prosecutions for offences of this nature, and, accordingly, I am not in possession of a complete list of such proceedings. I have, however, been informed of 32 prosecutions this year involving fines totalling about £126, exclusive of costs.

Mr. Higgs: Does the Minister consider that the fines imposed have been adequate to enforce this Order?

Mr. Hudson: I am afraid that is not my responsibility.

Mr. Silverman: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how much it costs the State to answer this Question in this way?

Mr. Hudson: No, Sir, not without notice.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: Is not the most likely punishment the sentence of death for the pigs?

Wood Fuel

Mr. Vernon Bartlett: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he will urge county war agricultural committees to procure the co-operation of landowners in the collection of blown trees, wood chips and root stumps, in order to lessen the fuel scarcity in rural areas?

Mr. Hudson: War agricultural executive committees are concentrating all their efforts on the production of food, and have neither the time nor the resources to undertake arrangements for the collection of wood fuel. I understand that the Ministry of Fuel and Power are organising


a scheme for the collection of wood fuel throughout the country during the coming winter.

Oral Answers to Questions — OLD AGE PENSIONERS

Mr. Tinker: asked the Minister of Health whether he is in a position to make a statement about the Assistance Board and the carrying out of the instructions with regard to clothing, etc., to old age pensioners; and can he say the amount expended on this and the average amount to each person?

Miss Horsbrugh: The Assistance Board inform my right hon. Friend that since my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his announcement on 16th July last, grants for clothing and bedding have been made in some 337,000 cases, at a total cost, including blankets (which were issued in kind), of some £1,120,000. The average cash grant is about £3 but this includes grants running up to £10 or £15 or more. The House will no doubt be glad to know that the work has been carried out with courtesy and tact and that the pensioners concerned have warmly welcomed the steps taken on their behalf.

Mr. Tinker: Can the hon. Lady say whether there is any restriction from either the Treasury or the Ministry of Health on the amount to be expended? Has either Department said that if the expenditure goes above a certain amount it must be cut down?

Miss Horsbrugh: I have no knowledge of that at all.

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC HEALTH

Nursing Profession (Inquiry)

Commander Sir Archibald Southby: asked the Minister of Health whether the Nurses' Salaries Committee, under the chairmanship of Lord Rushcliffe, has issued a Report; and, if not, when he anticipates such a Report will be available?

Miss Horsbrugh: I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the reply given to the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. Brown) on 10th November.

Sir A. Southby: Will the hon. Lady bear in mind that the nursing profession offers great services to the State and that

this Report should be brought out as soon as possible? The matter is a very important one and cannot be left unsettled for an unduly long time.

Miss Horsbrugh: Yes, and I think that if my hon. and gallant Friend will look at the reply to which I have referred him, he will see that the chairman states that considerable work has been done and that he hopes to be able to report early next year.

War-time Nurseries, Somerset

Mrs. Tate: asked the Minister of Health (1) whether he will state the cost of erecting and equipping the war-time nursery at Martock, Somerset; the number of staff employed in this nursery; the number of children attending it daily; and the estimated weekly cost of the upkeep of the nursery;
(2) whether he will state the cost of erecting and equipping the wartime nursery of Wells, Somerset; the estimated weekly cost of the upkeep; the number of staff employed in this nursery; and the number of children attending it daily?

Miss Horsbrugh: The Martock nursery was set up in existing premises, which cost £472 to adapt. The staff numbers four. The accommodation is for 50 children. The nursery was opened only at the end of September and in the latest return there were only eight children on the books. Steps are being taken to make the provision more widely known among mothers who may wish to enter employment. The nursery at the Recreation Ground, Wells, is in a pre-fabricated hut supplied by the Ministry of Works and Planning. The cost of the shell was about £350, and the cost of site preparation, erection and laying-on of services was £1,000. The staff numbers six, and there are at present 28 children on the books. In each case equipment is provided centrally and costs about £10 a place. The estimated weekly cost of upkeep is approximately £1 a week per child.

Mrs. Tate: Is the Minister aware that the general feeling in Somerset is that attendance at these nursery centres might be better if the hours at which they open and the hours at which they close were altered to conform to the needs of the women in the war factories?

Miss Horsbrugh: It is laid down quite clearly that the hours of opening and closing should conform with the hours at the war factories, and if the hon. Member can tell us of any cases where that is not so, we will look into them.

Sir H. Williams: Can the hon. Lady explain why it costs twice as much to keep a child in a nursery for half a day as it costs a mother to keep the child at home and look after it for the whole day?

Miss Horsbrugh: A mother's work at home is given free, but people have to be paid to take the place of mothers in looking after the children.

Homœopathy

Mr. MacLaren: asked the Minister of Health whether he will give an assurance that in any State medical scheme, the interests of that section of the public, estimated at approximately 1,000,000 people of all classes, who prefer to be treated by doctors trained in homœopathic medicine, will be adequately safeguarded, and that provision will be made for an adequate number of homœopathic doctors to meet the needs of this section of the public?

Miss Horsbrugh: The institution of any new public medical service would require the approval of Parliament. My right hon. Friend cannot undertake to forecast the character of any legislation which the Government might think fit to bring forward.

Medical Advisory Committee (Appointment)

Sir F. Fremantle: asked the Minister of Health what steps he is taking to keep in touch with representative medical opinion in regard to the planning of the future of Health Services?

Miss Horsbrugh: My right hon. Friend has for some time felt the need for associating with the work of the Ministry of Health a representative body of medical men and women engaged mainly in the clinical practice of their profession. He has therefore set up a Medical Advisory Committee whose terms of reference are to advise him on the medical aspects of problems relating to the health of the people. I shall circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT a list of the members.

Major Leighton: Can the hon. Lady ask this Committee to go into the question of the development of British spas?

Miss Horsbrugh: I will certainly inform my right hon. Friend of my hon. Friend's question.

Sir F. Fremantle: Why is the Committee to be set up to consist only of doctors concerned with clinical medicine and not with preventive medicine as well?

Miss Horsbrugh: Perhaps if my hon. Friend examines the list which will be circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT, he will be satisfied on that point.

Following is the List:

THE MINISTER OF HEALTH'S MEDICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE

The President of the Royal College of Physicians.

The President of the Royal College of Surgeons.

The President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynæcologists.

The Chairman of Council of the British Medical Association.

George C. Anderson, C.B.E., M.D., F.R.C.P.

James C. Arthur, M.B., B.S.

Miss Alice Bloomfield, M.D., F.R.C.S., F.R.C.O.G.

James A. Brown, M.D.

E. Rock Carling, M.B., F.R.C.S.

John A. Charles, M.D., F.R.C.P., D.P.H.

Professor Henry Cohen, M.D., F.R.C.P., J.P.

W. Allen Daley, M.D., F.R.C.P., D.P.H.

The Rt. Hon. the Viscount Dawson of Penn, G.C.V.O., K.C.B., M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S.

Edward A. Gregg, L.R.C.P.I., J.P.

The Lord Horder, G.C.V.O., M.D., F.R.C.P.

Sir Wilson Jameson, M.D., F.R.C.P., D.P.H. (Vice-Chairman).

William S. Macdonald, M.C., M.B., J.P.

Alan A. Moncrieff, M.D., F.R.C.P.

Professor Ralph M. F. Picken, M.B., D.P.H.

Professor Harry Platt, M.D., F.R.C.S.

Alfred T. Rogers, M.B.

Daniel O. Twining, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

Oscar Williams, M.B.

Miss Albertine L. Winner, M.D., M.R.C.P. (Lt.-Col.)

Oral Answers to Questions — WIDOWS' PENSIONS

Mr. Ammon: asked the Minister of Health whether a woman who, for 30 or more years, has lived as his wife with a man who had duly contributed to the Government insurance funds, is eligible after his death for a widow's pension, although in fact the couple had not been through the ceremony of marriage?

Miss Horsbrugh: No, Sir. Under the Contributory Pensions Acts, a widow's pension in respect of the death of an insured man cannot be granted to any woman other than the woman who was his legal wife at the date of his death.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE (DISABLEMENT BENEFIT)

Mr. Oliver: asked the Minister of Health what steps are being taken to increase disablement benefit under the National Health Insurance Acts; and whether he is aware of the serious privations suffered by the recipients of this benefit by reason of war conditions?

Miss Horsbrugh: I must ask my hon. Friend to await the Government's consideration of Sir William Beveridge's Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Billeting Allowance

Mr. De la Bère: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the considerable hardship which exists, particularly in the case of small householders who are called on to billet civil servants, he will now consider granting some additional payment in the weekly allowance, since the present allowance does not, in many cases, cover the actual cost of food and lodging?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Kingsley Wood): I cannot accept the statement that the billeting allowance does not cover the cost of lodging and two meals a day; and I do not think that any additional payment is called for.

Mr. De la Bère: Is the Minister aware that the Evesham Council have written a very strong letter to me saying that they have had people there for many months and in some cases for two

years? They have written to the Ministry of Health and to my right hon. Friend. Can he not do something to give the Evesham Council some satisfaction?

Sir K. Wood: Perhaps my hon. Friend will send me a copy of the letter.

Mr. De la Bère: I will certainly let my right hon. Friend have it.

Note Issue

Mr. Craven-Ellis: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the amount per annum which the Bank of England receives for its services in the management of the note issue and who receives the interest on the Government investments held as backing for the fiduciary note issue, amounting to £880,000,000?

Sir K. Wood: The Bank receive nothing for their services over and above the actual costs incurred by them in the production and management of the note issue. As regards the latter part of my hon. Friend's Question, I would refer to the answer which I gave him on 8th September, 1942.

Mr. Craven-Ellis: Is it correct to say that the Bank of England receives a sum approximating to £6,000,000 per annum for the conduct of the note-issue account?

Sir K. Wood: I do not know where my hon. Friend gets all his figures from. My answer has given him the facts.

Mr. Craven-Ellis: Can my right hon. Friend give us a schedule of the Government securities which are backing the note issue and say what the position is?

Sir K. Wood: I have already answered this Question.

Mr. Craven-Ellis: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will substitute for the Government securities which are based on debt and held by the Bank of England against the note-issue a guarantee approved by Parliament to pay the holders of currency notes on demand?

Sir K. Wood: No, Sir.

Mr. Craven-Ellis: Is it not a fact that my right hon. Friend told me on Tuesday last that it was the Government's obligation to back the money which is now being circulated in North Africa, and if


that is a Government obligation, is it not possible for money to be circulated in this country on the same basis?

Sir K. Wood: Whatever I told the hon. Member last Tuesday is certainly correct.

Mr. Craven-Ellis: Why cannot it be done in this country with our note issue?

Sir H. Williams: Is it not a fact, under the Currency and Bank Notes Act, 1928, that the whole of the profits of the Bank of England are paid to the Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Sir K. Wood: Perhaps my hon. Friend will take the point up with my hon. Friend who put the Question.

Civil Service (Equal Pay)

Sir L. Lyle: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has made any estimate of the annual cost of introducing equal pay in the Civil Service; and the cost of Civil Defence pensions without sex differentiation?

Sir K. Wood: No, Sir.

Mr. Craven-Ellis: Is it not possible to have a specified rate for work and for' services so that it can be paid irrespective of sex?

Sir K. Wood: It would mean a considerable inquiry, and I am reluctant to ask the civil servants concerned to embark upon it at the moment.

Lieutenant Butcher: Has my right hon. Friend consulted the Minister of Labour about paying the rate for the job?

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC ASSISTANCE (SERVICEMEN'S ALLOTMENTS)

Mr. Frankel: asked the Minister of Health whether any steps can be taken to provide that where a son or daughter serving in the Forces makes a voluntary allotment to a parent, such allotment shall be disregarded in considering any application for public assistance, especially in view of the fact that in most cases at least part of the allotment is spent upon the son or daughter?

Miss Horsbrugh: My right hon. Friend has no power to take any action on the point to which my hon. Friend refers.

Mr. Frankel: Will the hon. Lady ask her right hon. Friend to endeavour to get powers, which I am sure the House would be willing to give him?

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Relations With Admiral Darlan

Mr. Arthur Greenwood: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the Business for to-day and the next Sitting Days?

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Eden): As regards the Business for to-day, the Debate on the Address will be continued, and I understand that you, Mr. Speaker, intend to call the Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg) on Colonial Development. Afterwards, we shall ask the House to consider a Motion to approve the Potatoes (1942 Crop) (Charges) Order.
The Business for the next Sitting Days will be as follows:
First and Second Sitting Days—Consideration of the Amendment to the Address relating to Post-War Reconstruction standing on the Paper in the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence).
Third Sitting Day—The Debate on the Address will be brought to a conclusion after consideration of the Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern).
During this series of Sitting Days we shall ask the House to approve the draft Order proposed to be made under the Government of India Act and agree to the Second Reading of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill which, I understand, is a formality, and the Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.

Mr. A. Bevan: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will give an early opportunity for the discussion of the Motion which stands in the names of several hon. Members relating to the position of Admiral Darlan?

[That this House is of the opinion that our relations with Admiral Darlan and his kind are inconsistent with the ideals for which we entered and are fighting this war: furthermore, that these relations, if persisted in, will undermine the faith in


us among our friends in the oppressed and invaded nations and impair the military, social and political prospects of the final and complete triumph of the cause of the United Nations.]

Mr. Eden: No, Sir. I cannot give that undertaking. I think the House will have observed from what I said yesterday the reason why the Government do not consider such a discussion timely.

Mr. Bevan: As there is very considerable disturbance of opinion in the country about this matter, and as a large number of hon. Members in this House are disturbed about it—or if they are not, they ought to be—is it not perfectly proper that the House of Commons should have an opportunity to discuss it before we are irretrievably committed in North Africa to the establishment of Admiral Darlan and the further extension of the same policy in other fields of foreign policy?

Mr. Eden: It would certainly be perfectly proper as the hon. Gentleman suggests, but what the Government have to bear in mind is whether it is timely in relation to military operatons. On that point I made what I thought is quite a clear statement yesterday, to which I have nothing to add.

Mr. Graham White: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that while there is the gravest feeling of apprehension on this matter throughout the country, there is equally a recognition that it is a matter of considerable difficulty which requires to be handled with the greatest care?

Mr. Eden: I do not think I would at all dispute my hon. Friend's statement, which seems to be exactly in tune and in step with that of President Roosevelt himself.

Mr. Stokes: In view of what the Leader of the House has just said, may I put this point to him? On Tuesday I made certain remarks and addressed certain questions to him, and when I sat down the House pressed my right hon. Friend for an answer. He undertook to give an answer yesterday, but he did not answer the questions which were put to him. I now ask him, in view of the statement which he has made, when he proposes to fulfil his obligation to the House and give an answer to the questions which were addressed to him on Tuesday?

Mr. Eden: I do not think the hon. Member's charge is justified. I gave the House a full statement yesterday on the very first opportunity. We must really have the fullest regard to what is taking place in the military sense.

Mr. Stokes: On a point of Order. I put questions to the Leader of the House on Tuesday, and he undertook to answer them. I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, what is a private Member to do when the House is given an undertaking of that kind and the Leader of the House then refuses to fulfil the obligations?

Mr. Speaker: The only point at issue is that the hon. Member is not satisfied with the answer which he has been given.

Mr. Bevan: I want to ask your guidance, Sir. In the next series of Sittings, I understand, there will be Debates on Amendments to the Address, and those Debates for the first two days will be on reconstruction. This matter of establishing quislings abroad will have a very important bearing upon reconstruction, both at home and abroad. Will it, therefore, be proper for us to raise the implications of a new Government policy on our plans for reconstruction?

Mr. Speaker: After I have heard the hon. Member's speech, I will tell him.

Mr. Gallacher: Can the Leader of the House inform us whether it is the case that a protocol has been prepared, and will be signed within a very short time, making Darlan the High Commissioner of North Africa? Is it not desirable that there should be a discussion in this House before such a step is taken?

Hon. Members: Answer.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman has already answered that.

Mr. Buchanan: May I submit that the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher) has asked an important question, as to whether Admiral Darlan is being appointed to a certain position, which will give him great power, permanently; and is it not open to him to ask that question and for a Debate to take place upon it, because of its implications?

Mr. Speaker: It is not my business to say whether it is in the public interest or not that a question should be answered. If the right hon. Gentleman says that it


is not in the public interest, I think the House should accept his statement.

Mr. Buchanan: Surely it is in Order for the hon. Member to put a question, and to receive an answer? It is suggested that this Admiral is being appointed to a high post for some time to come, and given great power. If ever there was a need for an answer to a question, it is now, because if this question goes unanswered to-day, the implications in the country will become worse. If I might give the right hon. Gentleman some advice, after a number of years' membership of this House, I would say that he should answer the question.

Mr. Eden: I do not think my hon. Friends need put quite so much fervour into the matter. My position is quite plain, and I can state it to the House. Yesterday I gave a considered reply, giving all the information I could in relation to this subject, which is not entirely, or even mainly, a British subject. The United States are the principal party. I am quite prepared, if hon. Members want to put these further detailed questions, to give them an answer; but I do not think it is unreasonable that I should ask to see the Questions on the Paper, so that I may give a considered answer. That is my whole position, and I have nothing more to say.

Sir William Davison: Has it not been the practice for years that when a Question is put to a Minister he is entitled to say that it is not in the public interest-that he should answer it, and for the House to accept that?

Mr. Granville: In view of the serious reports in the Press that the Fighting French are no longer broadcasting, to Europe or elsewhere, will the right hon. Gentleman, who is responsible for this breach in our political warfare, say whether we shall be given an opportunity to discuss the matter in this House?

Mr. Eden: That is also a question on which I have had no notice. Also it does not arise on Business. But I can say that that broadcasting has not stopped on our volition. It is temporarily stopped, and I have every hope—and I am doing all I can to bring it about—that it will be resumed at the earliest possible moment.

Sir H. Williams: Is it not the case that the civil government of North Africa does

not come under our control, or the control of any nation allied to us?

Mr. Eden: That is the actual position. The military power is the power of the United States, and the present civil power is the French power. Our position has to be related to those facts.

Mr. Bevan: Is it in the public interest, and in the interest of good relations between us and the United States, that the implication should go abroad that these undesirable and unpleasant policies are being imposed upon us by the United States?

Mr. Eden: I have never said anything of the kind. I think all Members must understand that we are dealing with an extremely delicate situation at the moment, and that our troops and American troops are engaged in a very critical phase of the campaign. I think I am entitled to ask Members, if they want to ask more questions on the matter, to be good enough to give me notice.

BILL PRESENTED

NATIONAL SERVICE BILL,

"to authorise the making of preparatory arrangements for the calling up of male persons who are about to become liable to be called up for service under the National Service Acts, 1939 to 1941, to simplify the making of proclamations for the purposes of those Acts, and to amend the provisions of those Acts relating to exemptions"; presented by Mr. Bevin, supported by Sir Archibald Sinclair, Mr. A. V. Alexander, Sir James Grigg, and Mr. McCorquodale; to be read a Second time upon the next Sitting Day, and to be printed. [Bill 3.]

Orders of the Day — KING'S SPEECH

DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS [Eighth Day].

Order read for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [11th November]:
That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth:

Most Gracious Sovereign,
We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."—[Mr. A. G. Walkden.]

Question again proposed,

Orders of the Day — COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT

Sir Edward Grigg: I beg to move, at the end of the Question, to add:
And welcome in particular the declaration in the Gracious Speech that His Majesty's Government desire to do their utmost to raise the standards and improve the conditions of the peoples in the Colonies, but humbly regret that no mention is made of specific measures, including the establishment of a Colonial Development Board, to give practical effect to this declaration without delay.
My first task is a pleasant one. It is to congratulate my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Westmorland (Colonel Stanley) very warmly on his return to the Treasury Bench. He has already held many great offices with distinction, and he can rest content that he takes up this new and very important post with the good-will of his friends on these Benches, and, I believe, in all parts of the House. It is no derogation from the sincerity of what I have just said to add that I regret the change that has been made in this great office at the present time. Lord Cranborne had been in this office for a comparatively short time, but he has shown much grasp and constructive imagination. We are well aware from the admirable statements which have been made in this House by my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State that theirs was likely to be a fruitful political partnership, and I, like many other Members, regret that it has been found necessary in the public interest to break up that partnership at a critical moment like this. Nevertheless, I wish my right

hon. and gallant Friend all success in the office. Great things are expected of him, and I am sure he will not disappoint us. He will know that this Amendment is not moved in order to endanger the life of the Government, as is the case with some Amendments to the Address. The object of this Amendment is to get a statement of the detailed intentions of the Government in dealing with the Colonial problem at the present moment—a Colonial problem which is not only of great importance to us and to the Colonial peoples concerned, but which is of great importance in the international field at the present time.
What is required? I am sure that we do not require any more in the way of charters or general declarations of principle. Really in the matter of principle we know pretty well where we stand. I am, therefore, not going to argue about the abstract principles with which these charters and declarations generally deal. I shall not discuss, for instance, the necessity for the government of backward peoples by advanced peoples, or with the question of whether it would be better done by national Governments or by some kind of international authority. My own views upon both these questions of principle are absolutely clear. I agree with the principle stated 20 years ago in the Covenant of the League of Nations, that the government of backward peoples, where they are unable to stand alone in the strenuous conditions of the modern world, should be entrusted to more advanced peoples. That is the only course possible in their own interests and in the interests of the world. I am also convinced that it can best be done by the sovereign nations who already know these peoples and who are known by them and who have had the experience, and should not be entrusted to an international authority.
Other people hold other views on this subject—I believe that different views are held upon the subject in this House—and I am sure that further argument about abstract principles is not going to help us at the present turn of events. Such argument is really interminable. It gets you nowhere. Whether it be argument across the Floor of the House or argument from the rooftops across the Atlantic, it does not reduce the practical difficulties; on the contrary, it aggravates them. The only


thing to do in a delicate, and, I think, a dangerous situation at the present time, when great differences of opinion might develop between the two great peoples and systems upon whom more than upon any other the future of the world depends, is to stop wrangling about general principles, and in a phrase which will be familiar to all Americans, "Get down to cases," get down to the actual problems that we have to solve. In order to do that I suggest that we should set up, at once and without delay, the machinery necessary for investigating these problems and arriving at an agreed policy upon them.
The problems are vast and very varied, and the ordinary machinery, I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree, for discussion between the Governments, through diplomatic channels and so on, is slow, cumbrous and inadequate. The only way of making practical progress towards agreement is to organise inquiry by geographical groups. These problems fall into certain broad geographical groups. There is the group of Eastern and Pacific problems which have a character of their own; there are the African problems which have a character of their own, and there are the West Indian and Caribbean and Atlantic problems, which also have a character of their own. It is no good trying to discuss all these different groups of problems, so widely various in character, through some sort of central machinery which attempts to handle them together as a whole. It would be far better to create at once a separate representative conference for each, with all the nations interested represented on it, for discussing these problems by geographical groups. I cannot help believing that procedure of that kind would be aceptable to the other nations concerned and particularly to the United States of America; and I would urge upon the Government the absolute necessity for studying these problems, for setting up the machinery for their study and for arriving at an agreed policy about them now and at once. If it is not done at once, it will be too late. If it is left to the Armistice, we shall have crowds of problems thrust upon us, as they were thrown upon my right hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) in Paris 23 years ago. We ought to learn from the difficulties which arose then how important it is to get down to these things which you can study and get agreement upon in advance if only you

take time by the forelock and set up the necessary machinery without delay.
There is a great deal to be said about all three of the principal groups which I have mentioned, but I would like to deal more particularly with the problems of Africa. I spent some years of my life in Africa, and I am more familiar with Africa perhaps than with the rest of the problems of the Colonial Empire, although I have visited most parts of the Colonial Empire at some time or other. There are certain cardinal features in the African problem at the present time which must be considered. I put first the fact that the African peoples at the moment are keenly expectant and aroused. The African peoples throughout the course of this war have helped us magnificently in the actual conduct of the war. No one can praise too highly the war effort of all parts of the African Colonial Empire. They have volunteered in far greater numbers than could be trained or equipped. They have not only served with great efficiency and gallantry in many theatres, but they have also pressed financial gifts, comforts and all sorts of contributions upon their local governments. Bodies like local native councils, chiefs and even individual herdsmen have brought in their offerings to help in the cause of victory for the United Nations. More than that, in Africa, I think it is true to say, nothing has made so deep an impression upon the African mind as Hitler's dictum in. "Mein Kampf" that it would be a sin against man and his Creator to educate Africans to such professions as teaching or the law or to raise them to any kind of advanced participation in civilised life. That statement of Hitler's, which certainly represents his honest belief, has been broadcast by us all over the Empire. It has bitten very deep, but it has also produced an anxious inquiry as to what is the alternative that we offer ourselves. All through Africa the people who think—and these are an increasing number all the time—are asking, "What are we to expect from the victory which we are doing our best to bring about?"
I think hon. Members in all parts of the House will agree that this awareness in Africa is met halfway by a great surge of feeling in this country and throughout the freedom-loving world. There is a strong desire to honour our obligations to the full, a new and deeper consciousness


of what we owe to these people at the present time. One finds that on every side, and I think that it carries with it a much wider public than that which supported Wilberforce after the Napoleonic wars. After the Napoleonic wars there was, as hon. Members know, a great surge of humanitarian feeling, led by Wilberforce and others, which produced the emancipation of the slaves and, ultimately, the abolition of the slave trade. But that movement was, in a sense, negative. It aimed at emancipation and nothing else. It did not attempt to show what was to happen to the slaves when they were emancipated. It was apparently thought that the fact of freedom was sufficient and that Nature would do the rest Now by contrast we are deeply conscious of a continuous duty. It is not negative but positive, and I think we have moved on from the idea of trusteeship, which, in itself, was a great advance, to a more constructive idea still—the idea of partnership with these peoples. That is the relation which I believe we want to see expressed in the policy which is pursued towards our African fellow subjects.
But how to give reality to this ideal? The moment you begin to apply the principles you have in mind, to give expression to the feeling which is so deep, you begin to reach controversy, which may do great harm to the peoples concerned. Examination of these problems will, I think, show that any response to the African appeal—an inarticulate, vague appeal, if you like—is bound to depend upon one feature more than anything else, namely, revenue. Anybody who has been responsible for government in Africa knows how at every turn in that Continent, the greater part of which is poor and has a sparse population, progress is held up by the fact that revenue is very small, that the possibility of getting capital from outside is very limited, and that you cannot finance social services, education, better means of transport, housing and all the things we would like to give at the present moment without committing yourself to a scale of taxation which is more than the population can bear. That is your problem at every turn. I have often read statements of enthusiasts in Africa that we ought to do this or that. Many of these people came to see me when I was in Kenya, and they always seemed to think that the revenue

which is necessary to do all this would somehow fall like manna from heaven. But revenue does not fall like manna from heaven. It depends upon the production of wealth, and not only upon that but upon a profitable market for your produce, either in the place of production or elsewhere.
I see opposite me the father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, and I am reminded of a conversation which has just come back into my mind. It was made by M. Clemenceau when he came back from India after he had left office. I remember that he told my right hon. Friend about what he thought of our Government in India, and said that our administration there was remarkable. "What you have set up there is an achievement which perhaps could not have been done by any other race," he said, "and the purity of your system of justice in that country is almost miraculous." I said to him, "Surely, M. Clemenceau, that is not all the comment you have to make. Your comments are usually more incisive than that." His reply was, "It is true. I do not think you have done enough to enable the people of India to afford all the benefits you have conferred upon them up to date." That, I think, is a true comment about India, because in our administration of India we have been so frightened of exploitation that we have undoubtedly delayed the development of Indian wealth. On some occasions Indian development of wealth was delayed in the interest of manufacturers in this country—the history of the Lancashire cotton industry is not too good in this respect. But generally speaking delay has been through honest fear of exploitation and of what would be said about it in this House.
Certainly that danger exists strongly in Africa at the present time. You cannot raise social standards without producing wealth, and the most marked sign of that is the advancement of the West African Colonies as compared with the East African. The West African Colonies have advanced because they possess natural jungle crops which can be gathered without much labour and sold in the world market at a good price. So revenue poured in, with the result that great improvements were possible. In the rest of Africa no such thing is possible. The production of wealth, the


increase of revenue, means the application of thought, enterprise, capital and labour. It means a contribution to the bringing out of Africa's potential wealth which can only be made by people commanding great resources and having considerable influence over what is done in the markets of the world. If it is true that revenue has to be produced and that the population of Africa is very sparse in comparison with Africa's potential wealth, you are driven to the conclusion—as I believe all who have studied this question impartially have found—that without immigration on a considerable scale Africa will not make much advance. That case was stated—and I expect Members have read it—with great lucidity by Field Marshal Smuts many years ago. I think it was in 1929, in the Rhodes lectures which he delivered at Oxford at that time.
The fact that population is necessary must be faced. We have made experiments with Asiatic populations, but none of them has been very successful, and I think the House will agree that if population is to be introduced, it had much better be a European population, the best population, trained in our own ways of thought, that can be found to go. The House will realise that this raises a great problem in Africa. It is a question which agitates the United States of America certainly as much as ourselves. They have it within their own boundaries. It is the profoundly difficult problem of the relations between the black and the white races when they have to live together in the same society. The United States have that problem right at home. It is in their midst, and we must face it in East Africa, although not, I think, in West Africa. We already have it in South, Central and East Africa. White settlement has moved up the central spine of Africa, where the greatest potential wealth is to be found and the climate is favourable, like mercury up a tube. More is needed; more will go. If you are to make Africa a place of more advanced social life, a place where greater opportunity abounds, you must face the fact that the European population will rapidly increase and that you will be compelled to show much more realism than you have hitherto shown in facing the problem of black and white. The last time the House gave its mind to that subject was when the Joint Select Committee was appointed, I think

in 1930, to deal with the East African territories. The Report of that Joint Select Committee was not a very inspiring one, and its recommendations certainly were not constructive—most of them were not even clear. We cannot go oh fiddling with this subject as we have fiddled with it in the past.
I take it for granted that in any discussions of this problem which take place—and it is vital to the main cardinal problems in Africa which have to be answered—the Union of South Africa will be asked to participate and that, of course, the settlers' opinion in our own Colonies will also be sought. The greatest representative of the European race in Africa is Field Marshal Smuts, and it is really inconceivable that he or his representatives should not play a very considerable part in the discussion of policy for the African Continent. Let the House consider what we owe to Field Marshal Smuts and to his influence in his own country in this war. If it had not been for him the Union would have been neutral, like Eire, and the fact that the Union was brought into the war as a full partner from the very start is a service to the United Nations which I do not believe has been fully appreciated yet. The South African people have given most valuable troops to the African theatres, but the greatest service of all is the fact that South Africa has been available to us as a base and not, like Eire, denied to us as a base. If South Africa had been neutral, do hon. Members suppose that we should be holding India or even Egypt at the present time? I take it, then, that the Union of South Africa, under its great leader and Prime Minister, will play a part. But I hope that in the House and in the country we shall not accept the co-operation of our own European people in Africa as a distasteful necessity. I hope we shall welcome it and ask for it, and meet it ungrudgingly with a whole heart. The peace of Africa depends enormously on the spirit in which now and henceforth this problem is met.
There are two lessons from history in this matter which we ought not to forget. The first is that watertight compartments on these difficult questions of the relations of black and white are really impossible. The United States tried it. They tried to have one half of a great Union running one way and another half running on entirely different principles. The re-


sult was a terrible civil war. It is not impossible that bad handling of this problem would, in the end, produce the same consequences in Africa, for remember that when people are thinking not only of their own future but of the future of their children, they can become very intolerant of attempted dictation from without. But quite apart from that, there is the fact that dictation or indifference produces lack of sympathy and breeds extremism. After the Napoleonic wars, as I said just now, a great humanitarian wave swept over us and was applied to Africa. It was, indeed, necessary and right, but it was applied with extraordinary little consideration for or understanding of the people on the spot. Again and again, if you look at the way in which we did these things, you have a great dear to lament. What was the result? It was the beginning of movements which entirely alienated the Dutch and led to the great trek, which led to hatred between the Dutch and British Governments, hatred building up throughout the century, until at the end of the century came, as always, the inevitable result, war. I hope, therefore, we shall realise that dictation or indifference or hostility breed extremism, whereas if you go to meet these people with understanding and with consideration you will get moderation in return.
Fortunately, the machinery for dealing with this complex African problem already exists to some extent. It has been set up in the war. One most vital improvement has been made in the war, one for which I strove, as my right hon. Friend knows, very hard during the years of peace. We have now the West African Colonies grouped under a Minister of State, so that consultation is very much easier with that group. The same process has been carried on, not quite so far but fairly effectively, in East Africa, where the Governor of Kenya is in some respect a High Commissioner. There are great advantages to be derived from the combination of these territories for war purposes, but that combination will be equally necessary for the tasks of peace. One of the assurances I should like to have from the Government is that there is no intention whatever of undoing what has been set up in the war, but that all this grouping of the Colonies that have common interests and are contiguous will be made permanent. You must add to that British

group in Africa, which already exists, for the purposes of the study which I have in mind, the other African Colonial Powers. You must add Belgium, you must add Portugal, I think; Portugal not only has problems but creates problems in Africa at the present moment. I do not think it is undiplomatic to say that. I presume now that you will add France. All the Powers with responsibilities in Africa should be asked to co-operate. [An HON. MEMBER: "And Egypt?"] Egypt has no responsibilities outside her own boundaries. The Government should get this study undertaken now and set up the necessary machinery at once. It is urgently needed in the case of Africa and, I think they will agree, it is equally urgent in Malaya, where obviously the future is extremely obscure, and in the Caribbean, where completely new international problems have been created by action taken during the war.
In setting up this machinery, there is no doubt that we must have, to the utmost degree to which we can secure it, the co-operation of the United States. The United States already are directly involved in the Pacific and in the Caribbean. They are fighting now in North Africa with us, and, indeed, the North African campaign is under United States command. The co-operation of the United States will be as necessary for the future of Africa as it will be for the future of Malaya or the Caribbean Colonies. Why? In the first place, for that elementary need of all societies which are counting on progress, that is, security and peace. We guaranteed the peace of the Colonial Empire for a hundred years at the British taxpayers' sole cost; but there is no Power in the world to-day which can guarantee single-handed the peace of any hemisphere or continent. Peace in Europe and in all the other continents is therefore going to depend upon international combination of a solid kind. The United Nations must form the core, and they will need the participation of the United States. It will also be necessary for economic development. The command of the United States over the economic future of all Colonial territories is bound to be very great. Without their help we should find it extremely difficult to do anything to secure the economic welfare of the territories for which we are responsible, and we therefore need their help. But the greatest need as between


the British Empire and the United States, if you can get it, is moral unity. We failed to get it after the last war. The schism between their country and ours is more responsible than any other single cause for where we find ourselves at present. If we could have kept their co-operation, things in Europe would have been extremely different.
To take an economic case, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs will remember how fatal it was that the United States withdrew from the Commission set up to deal with reparations from Germany. Her position in that body was intended to be most influential, almost arbitral. The machinery had been set up on the understanding that the United States would play their part. When they did not come in, the machinery broke down, and everyone knows how much is due to the failure of the reparations machinery to work. We must therefore endeavour to keep the closest possible understanding with the United States. The Americans must decide for themselves their own duties and their own interests, but I am sure they will not arrive at just conclusions on the matter by an exchange of broadcasts across the Atlantic. The only way to deal with it is to get down to the problems on the spot and set up representative machinery for that purpose which the democracies can trust.
Finally, I would say a word on our system in this country and the way in which it is likely to respond to the needs of the moment and the needs of the future in the Colonial sphere. The Imperial responsibilities of this country are at present entrusted to three Departments, under three Secretaries of State—the Dominions Office, the India Office and the Colonial Office. As to the India Office, a very considerable change in that sphere certainly lies no great distance ahead. I feel that changes are also necessary in regard to the other two Departments, from the point of view of the Colonial Empire. The present system, under which a clear-cut line is drawn between the Commonwealth and the Colonial Empire, is, I think, a misleading one. It cuts across many realities; it misrepresents the ideals by which we are inspired. It gives countenance to the slanderous but damaging charge that we are administering two different kinds of Empire at once; that the Commonwealth is a new dispensation,

like the New Testament, and the Colonial Empire a perpetuation of a reactionary Old Testament dispensation from which the Commonwealth has emerged. That is an excessively dangerous and unreal view of our Imperial ideals.
There is another objection to the present arrangement. The Dominions themselves are great Colonial Powers. Most of them have dependencies of their own. But, quite apart from that, they are all very deeply interested in what is done in certain groups of Colonies, and we ought to face the implications of that fact and also the reality of what is meant by any true conception of a Commonwealth. A Commonwealth does not mean a group of nations looking at each other in a friendly manner. It means the acceptance of a joint responsibility because there is a fundamental, common ideal and interest. If the Commonwealth is to be a reality, let us remember that it is not this country which should administer, on the one hand, the Commonwealth and, on the other, the Colonial Empire. It is the Commonwealth which, as a Commonwealth, should administer the Colonial Empire and all other Imperial responsibilities. That is a fact which, if the Commonwealth is to remain a reality, must be faced. I remember discussing this, after he had retired from office, with the late Sir Robert Borden when I was in Canada after the war, and he said that in his opinion it would have to be recognised that the joint responsibilities and the relations with each other of the members of the great nations of the Commonwealth were the supreme business of every Commonwealth Government, different in kind from any other. He therefore thought these relations should be recognised as Prime Minister's business. As a matter of fact, all important business between the Dominions and this Government is even now conducted between Prime Ministers. Sir Robert Borden, of course, admitted that the burden on Prime Ministers is very great, and he agreed that in this country there must be a Dominions Department. Nevertheless, he thought the principle ought to be accepted that the central relations of the Commonwealth were Prime Ministers' business in this, just as in all the other Dominions, and that our machinery should make provision for that. His own idea—I think I am entitled to quote it—was that in dealing with central Commonwealth relations in this country,


if the Prime Minister himself could not find the time, the most suitable Minister would foe the Lord President of the Council, because the Privy Council is one of the links of Empire, all His Majesty's Ministers in all parts of the Empire being members of the Privy Council. Whether that idea is accepted or not, there must be a Department dealing with Dominion affairs to handle the ordinary run of Commonwealth business, so that only really important correspondence has to fall on the Prime Minister. It may be accident, but it is interesting, that the present Secretary of State for the Dominions is also Deputy Prime Minister.
So much for the relations of the Dominions inter se. They are also, I repeat, Colonial Powers and they should henceforth be more closely associated with the administration and government of the Colonial Empire. I believe that to be absolutely vital at the present time. The way in which we deal departmentally with our Imperial responsibilities therefore requires reconsideration, and I hope that our Imperial responsibilities in the Colonial sphere will now be sorted out and dealt with more or less in accordance with the three groups for which I have suggested that special machinery should be set up. I believe it desirable that we should have a separate Department dealing with each of these three groups. For the moment this would involve a redistribution of responsibility between the three Secretaries of State; but if our system of Government develops still further and we adopt the recommendations made long ago by the Haldane Committee on our system of government, then there should be three subordinate Ministers and Departments under a superior Cabinet Minister, who would deal with the whole range of our Imperial responsibilities.
I am sure that some reorganisation of that kind is desirable. It would assist the House to shoulder its grave responsibilities in this matter. The record of the House—and I do not think it is the fault of the House—in regard to the Colonial Empire has not been very good. In the five years before the war there were only nine Debates on Colonial affairs. Four of these were Debates on the Estimates, when hon. Members get up and ask questions and put points covering a vast

field in a very short time, and the Minister responsible says he will inquire or gives answers. For a whole year that is the end of the Colonial Empire so far as the House is concerned. There were four other Debates, but they were all on Palestine, which happened to excite the House at that time. There was, in addition, a general Debate on a Private Members' day, for which my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. de Rothschild) had the good fortune to get a place in the Ballot. That was the whole of the discussion on the Colonial Empire in five years. The Colonial Empire contains 75,000,000 people, all dependent ultimately on this House. I do not wish to disparage the importance of Scotland. But think of the attention we gave to the 5,000,000 people in Scotland compared with the attention we gave to the 75,000,000 in the Colonial Empire who are dependent on this House!
I think, too, that from the point of view of the Executive the system has been unfortunate. We have had seven Colonial Secretaries in seven years. My right hon. Friend is the seventh. Whatever the capacity of right hon. Gentlemen who occupy that office, they cannot possibly do justice to it on terms like that. It is an unfortunate thing to create the impression in the Colonial Empire, as we certainly do, that this office is treated as a counter in the ordinary processes of English politics, and that, when changes are made, they are prompted by the convenience of politics in this country and not by the convenience and welfare of the many millions at stake. It would be an advantage to the House if this grouping system were adopted and the House were able in that way to discuss the problems of the Colonial Empire in better order and more frequently.
It is often said, and particularly said in the United States, that the reason that we have not done anything recently for the Colonial Empire is that we are indifferent and played out. That idea is to some extent spread by foolish propaganda which makes a deal of noise though it carries little weight. Certainly the idea is widespread that in regard to its Imperial responsibilities this great nation is played out. I admit a great lack of education in our democracy on Imperial questions. I hope that that will be put right, but even with the present low state


of education on Imperial questions I should not be afraid of putting to the people of this country the question whether or not we should stand by our Imperial responsibilities. I am certain that they are still in temper, spirit and mind a deeply conscientious Imperial people and that there is only one answer which would be made. But we must bring our organisation up to date. The great advantage of our Constitution has been its adaptability to changed circumstances. Let us then fit it once again to the times and prove that our democracy possesses in as great a degree as ever before the ancient creative virtue of our race.

Squadron-Leader Peter Macdonald: I beg to second the Amendment which has been so ably and eloquently dealt with by the hon. Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg), who has given the Government and the House a great deal of food for thought and, I hope, for action. No one can speak with greater knowledge and experience on these subjects than the hon. Member. For a long period, ever since he was one of Lord Milner's brilliant young men in Africa, he has achieved much good work, as a writer, as an administrator and as an advocate in the interests of our Colonial and Imperial affairs. He has made another contribution to-day, which is well worthy of the consideration of the Government and the House.
It was a matter of great satisfaction to me to see in the Gracious Speech mention that the question of Colonial development was to play an important part in the legislation of the Government during the present Session. Some of us have been pressing for such a declaration for some time, and we had great hopes that when that declaration was made and when this Debate took place the Secretary of State for the Colonies, through his able Under-Secretary, would be in a position to make a pronouncement of his policy for Colonial development. We hoped that he would be able to give a reply to certain suggestions and proposals which were put forward in the last Debate on this subject. It was somewhat of a shock, however, to those of us who were working in close touch with the late Minister on these subjects to find that he was no longer in his place and that the question of making a statement on future Colonial policy was

handed over to somebody else who has assumed that office. Like my hon. Friend who spoke before me, I have the greatest respect and admiration for the brilliance of the newly appointed Secretary of State, and it is no derogation of his abilities to say that it is very unfair to us and to him, and certainly to the House, that he should be called upon so suddenly to reply to the Debate, because it has not been possible for him at 24 hours' notice to get any knowledge or experience of his new office. However, if he has entrusted to the Under-Secretary the duty of replying, I hope also that he has given him latitude to deal with the problems which we have been dealing with together for a considerable time, and that he will be able to give us some pronouncement on Colonial policy. Otherwise, I am afraid this Debate will be a barren one and a disappointment to many persons in this House.
At this stage I want to register a protest with my hon. Friend at the manner in which the Prime Minister—like successive Prime Ministers—has dealt with this question of the appointment of a Colonial Secretary. I was one of those in the House for a number of years who thought that the Colonies were not getting sufficient attention or the support which they deserved, and who pressed for the setting-up of a separate Ministry, divorcing the Colonial Office from the Dominions Office. Since that change was made there has been nothing but a succession of Ministers and Under-Secretaries in that office, and none of them has been long enough there to get sufficient knowledge of his subject to formulate a policy. The result is that there is no long-term policy, in fact I do not know whether there is any definite policy at all for Colonial administration. To my mind the frequent changes in this office make it all the more important that the suggestion put forward by myself and some of my colleagues in the last Debate for the setting up of a Colonial Development Board to plan Colonial policy should be put in hand right away. It is impossible for Ministers, however willing they may be, and certainly not for the Under-Secretary, who has to deal with questions of supply and to answer questions in this House, to deal during the war with the problems of future Colonial administration and reconstruction. Therefore, it is essential that we should have a body outside the Parliamentary sphere free to


devote its full time to this problem and to formulate a policy.
A great many committees and bodies have been set up to deal with local domestic problems of post-war reconstruction. We have a Ministry dealing with post-war reconstruction, town and country planning committees, reconstruction commit-tees, also committees dealing with social problems—the Beveridge Committee, for instance. They are all dealing with matters of post-war reconstruction at home, but so far we have had no indication that a similar body is to be set up to deal with questions of Colonial post-war policy. That is why I ask the Government to set up this Colonial Development Board as soon as possible and to let them get on with their work. We have reason to-day to expect a United Nations' victory within a reasonable time, and it is very important, as was said elsewhere, that we should not be "caught by the peace" but have plans and proposals ready to put into operation when it comes. Otherwise, we shall have to answer to a good deal of criticism, some of which is already filtering through, on the way we administer our Colonies. I do not accept all that criticism. I think a great deal of it is unjustified and is due to ignorance, and also to the fact that the Colonial Office itself has been so backward in educating both the British public and the world at large on what is our Colonial policy, what are our ideals and all that we have done in the way of Colonial development in the past.
I return to the proposals which I mentioned in the last Debate and which are contained in our Amendment, which include the setting up of a Colonial Development Board. What should be the personnel and functions of this Board? In my view it should be a statutory body and it should be responsible to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Someone has suggested that there should be a separate Department of the Colonial Office, called a planning department; others have suggested that there should be at the Colonial Office a separate Minister to deal with planning, an extra Under-Secretary. I have no objection to either of those suggestions provided a Board is set up first. It should have a full-time chairman and secretariat to deal with such questions as defence—and therefore it should have a representative of the

Chiefs of Staff Committee to consult, because a great many mistakes have been made in that direction—it should have a full time member for questions of finance, health, housing and education, and it should have a representative of the Supply Departments. It should also have power to co-opt at any time experienced technicians or engineers, business men or anybody else who would be able to assist, to serve on sub-committees dealing with questions of production for home and export, communications and power. In addition to these permanent members and co-opted members the Colonial peoples themselves should have representation, and also the Dominions if they agree.
The functions of the Board should be to co-ordinate and consolidate the work of the many committees which the Colonial Secretary has already set up and to formulate a long term-policy. It should take over the administration of the Colonial Development Fund. At present that Fund has a grant of some £5,500,000 a year for ten years, but unfortunately, as has already been pointed out, in wartime, owing to shipping and supply difficulties, it has been impossible to spend the money and it is reverting to the Treasury. Most of the money voted for that purpose has reverted to the Treasury, and of course that is inevitable during war-time, but what is the use of voting money unless it is to be used? I am going to make a suggestion, which I have already offered, as to how that money should be utilised. It is obvious to anybody who has considered the question of Colonial development that £5,000,000 a year over a period of ten years is only a drop in the ocean, a flea bite, compared with what must be spent after the war on any policy or any broad measure of Colonial development. There are, as has been mentioned, about 40 different administrations looking after 65,000,000 people, and the last war caused a gap in Colonial development which has never been filled up, though we were beginning to overtake the lag when this war started. Now there is another gap of three or four years when nothing can be done in that direction, and a great deal of money must be spent. My suggestion, which I know has the support of people who understand these problems, is that the Colonial Development Fund should be set aside to guarantee the in-


terest upon a loan large enough to cover the amount required by the Colonial Development Board in any schemes they may wish to carry out. It will be a very large sum indeed I have seen mentioned the sum of £500,000,000, but it will certainly be a sum in the hundreds of millions, if we are to make any impression at all, and it is absolutely essential that we should have some means of guaranteeing a loan after the war. Making use of the Colonial Development Fund, is, I think, the best way. I urge both Ministers to give serious consideration to the problem and to make an announcement upon it to-day if possible. During the last Debate, about six months ago, the right hon. Gentleman promised that he would refer the matter to his right hon. Friend and would make a statement on it at an early date. Up to now he has not done so. I hope that he will do so to-day. Otherwise, I hope he will tell us what proposals he intends to put forward in its place.
Reference has been made to criticisms that are being made to-day from the other side of the Atlantic, as well as from people at home, about the manner in which we are administering our Colonial Empire. I am afraid that some of those criticisms are based upon the poisonous propaganda put out by Dr. Goebbels and which, I am afraid, has been swallowed hook, line and sinker by people not too kindly disposed towards us in America and in other places. A great deal of it is due to ignorance of the facts. I want to know what the Colonial Office are doing, by means of propaganda, textbooks, bluebooks, or education, to try to dispel the misunderstanding that exists at the present time on the other side of the Atlantic and in this country. I believe the Colonial Office have been very backward in this matter of education and information by means of textbooks for schools, pamphlets or bluebooks to keep the country and the world informed of their activities. Although I think more should have been done, I maintain that we have nothing to be ashamed of in our administration of our Colonial Empire. Taking the whole of our administrative record over the last century, by and large, one can say that we have no reason to be ashamed and every reason to be proud.
The charges that are made should be answered. The first charge is that Britain—chiefly Britain, although other nations also possess Colonies—have always used their Colonies for exploitation and for their own enrichment. Nothing could be farther from the truth than that statement. Britain and the Government of the United Kingdom have poured far more wealth into their Colonies than ever they got out of them. No revenue has ever been accepted from any British Colony by the British Exchequer. Although great wealth has been poured into the Colonies and grants-in-aid have been provided for practically every Colony in the Empire at one time or another, to help them to balance their Budgets, when they have found themselves in a position to pay their way, they have not subscribed one penny towards the British Exchequer, and they have never been asked to do so. That is the answer to one of the charges made by the propagandists.
The next charge I will consider is that we have prevented other countries from obtaining raw material in our Colonial Empire. That, again, is absolutely untrue. No British Colony has at any time put an embargo upon any kind of export of raw materials or goods. On the other hand, although the British Government at one time had millions of unemployed in this country, they never compelled any British Colony to buy from Britain, in spite of the existence of a preference. Statistics show that although Colonies with preferences have increased their purchases from the Mother country, their purchases from other countries have doubled or trebled. That is the answer to the charge that we have denied to other countries access to our raw materials. A League of Nations Committee on Raw Materials has confirmed this fact.
Why are not these things made known by broadcast and other means, so that people will be able to answer these charges when they are made? The fact that to-day all our Colonies, the free Dominions and India are fighting shoulder to shoulder with us in the war for the preservation of democracy and for freedom should be ample evidence of the faith and confidence that they have in us, and that we shall fulfil our trust to them in the future.

Mr. Riley: In the first place, I wish to associate myself with the observations of the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment and with those of the Seconder. I would express my own regret at the changes which have recently taken place in regard to the administration of our Colonial Office. I say that, not in disparagement of the new Colonial Secretary, but because I am sure that rapid and numerous changes do not make for a stable policy or a good policy in our Colonial administration. I think I am correct in saying that since the last war we have had no fewer than 18 Colonial Secretaries and, in this Parliament, five or six, an average of very little more than a year each. I am sure we all must agree that the short space of 12 months is not enough time to allow any Minister to get a grasp of the problems which face us in our Colonies. Having said that, I wish to say that I was somewhat disappointed in the speech of the hon. Member who moved the Amendment, in that he set out by deprecating the occupying of time or the wasting of time in these days with regard to academic declarations about charters, either Atlantic, I suppose, or otherwise, so far as the Colonies are concerned, and urged that the right thing to do was to get down to concrete remedies for the ills which we know exist in the Colonies. Apart from a general passage in his speech in which he referred to the possibilities of co-operative action in Africa, of course, in the East and West, with Portugal, Belgium and France, I did not find any concrete proposals whatever.
But the hon. and gallant Gentleman who seconded the Amendment has made some kind of concrete proposal. That concrete proposal is that there should be set up a Colonial Development Board, and the purpose of that is to meet the passage in the Gracious Speech in which these words are used:
My Government desire to do their utmost to raise the standards and to improve the conditions of My Peoples in the Colonies, who are playing their full part in the united war effort.
That is the expressed desire in the King's Speech, to raise the standards and improve the conditions of our Colonial peoples. The question occurs to me that if there is to be a board set up to achieve that purpose, with which, of course, we are all in agreement, what kind of a board

is it to be? My hon. and gallant Friend has said that he visualises a statutory board, but as to what powers, financial or otherwise, that board would have, I did not quite gather that it was made very clear. If the Colonial Development Board visualised in this proposal, which is to be a statutory body, consists, as I gather, of business men, of experts, of scientists, of perhaps experienced Colonial administrators also, the thing that strikes me is as to what would be its immediate purpose. Will it be to develop our Colonies on the lines of commercial enterprise with a view to encouraging vested interests to provide capital and utilise the natural resources of the Colonies for their mainly commercial and private purposes? If that is the kind of board that is visualised, I do not think it is the kind of concrete remedy that is in keeping with the times or which would meet the problems we have to face.
On the other hand, if the proposer has in mind that it is to be a board of a purely disinterested character, existing and functioning solely for the purpose of developing the Colonies for the benefit of the inhabitants of the Colonies, there is something to be said for that. But I would rather like to submit to the House that that purpose can be achieved in a much more direct, representative and democratic manner than the setting-up of such a board as has been briefly outlined by the Seconder of the Amendment. I wish in just a few words to submit that the first thing which might be done, and which ought to be done, now that we are alive to the necessity of facing the issues in the Colonies which the war has accentuated, is that we should ask the Government not to set up a Colonial Development Board such as has been suggested to-day, but that they should create a Standing Parliamentary Committee, consisting of representatives of both Houses of Parliament and of all parties, meeting with the Colonial Under-Secretary or Secretary of State, or some other special Minister, and functioning regularly, systematically, surveying the Colonial situation and keeping this House, which after all is responsible for the remedies to be applied, in close touch with the developments and the possibilities of any schemes that might be applied.
In that connection I would also suggest that perhaps, if the Government should


see their way to the setting-up of such a Standing Parliamentary Committee, there might be a new and additional Minister. There would be scope and great opportunity for an additional Minister to be in charge of Colonial reconstruction, functioning with the Standing Committee of both Houses of Parliament, surveying the situation, exploring problems, surveying the remedies which could be applied. That would be one of the best steps we could take. There have been Commissions sent out by this House to nearly all our Colonies over the last 40 years. These Commissions have reported. They have spent sometimes many months investigating some special Colonial problem which had arisen, and their Reports have been issued to Parliament. But over the 40 years very little indeed has come out of those Reports. Commission after Commission has been reporting over the last 30 years, at least, on social conditions in the Colonies—housing, health, education, and so on—and the Reports are pigeonholed in the Colonial Office, and very little has been done. Why? It may be, of of course, that the Colonial Office or the Secretary of State was either not sufficiently concerned to find a remedy, or they were too busy to attend to them.
It is for that reason that I stress the importance of this House accepting responsibility by the creation of a Standing Parliamentary Committee, which could keep in constant touch with Colonial problems. Such a Committee could have its regular meetings and its expert advisers. It could have sub-committees, such as were referred to by my hon. and gallant Friend who seconded the Amendment. This idea of a Standing Parliamentary Committee for colonial affairs is not new; it has been ventilated many times in the last eight or nine years. In 1938 the then Prime Minister, the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain, expressed a great sympathy with the idea, and gave a kind of half-promise that this demand from Members on all sides of the House would be taken into very serious consideration; but still, in 1942, nothing has come of it. I suggest that the Under-Secretary should bring this matter again before his chief, and that, in view of the problems which are arising now and which will arise after the war, very serious consideration should be given to the matter. Other Parliaments have had such committees. France always had a committee surveying French

Colonial affairs. I have referred to the Reports which have been made on Colonial conditions. The last was the Report of the Royal Commission which went to investigate conditions in Jamaica in 1939. It did not issue a full Report, but it did issue some Report, after the war had broken out, and it made recommendations. The hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Wight (Squadron-Leader Macdonald) spoke of everything being lovely in the Colonial garden.

Squadron-Leader Macdonald: Who said that?

Mr. Riley: I gathered that the hon. and gallant Member was suggesting that there was nothing to be ashamed of in our Colonial policy and in Colonial conditions.

Squadron-Leader Macdonald: I must correct the hon. Member. I said that a great deal more must be done; but that in respect of what we have done we have nothing to be ashamed of.

Mr. Riley: I accept the hon. and gallant Member's explanation; but he did say that we had every reason to be proud of what had been done in our Colonial administration. I do not want to disparage what we have done in the Colonial sphere. I agree that a great deal has been done by Governments from time to time. I accept what the hon. and gallant Member said about other countries having access to our Colonial products, and it is quite true that this country has made no profit out of the Colonies. But what about certain individuals, who have had the monopoly of those resources—sugar, bananas, oil, and, in Africa, metals and so on? Have not individuals made immense profits out of those Colonial resources, by the utilisation of the natural conditions and the labour which were there available? As to the necessity of getting down to real remedies for the problems, may I quote a passage from the American journal "Time"? The Jamaica correspondent of that journal wrote, in September of this year, that fear of starvation and long-smouldering resentment at economic servility and past exploitation have made the natives in the slumlands of Spanish Town and another town close to Kingstown restless. On the fringe of Kingstown there were now 9,000 unemployed labourers who refused to go on after a taste of the high wages paid in the United States naval bases.
He said that 1,300 night vigilantes had been ordered out to patrol the streets at night with clubs and revolvers, and Canadian and United States troops were ordered out. The marching troops were a tacit warning that Jamaican police were backed by armed force. That is an indication of conditions in our Colonies to-day. What are we doing to meet a situation of that kind? In 1940 we passed the Colonial Development and Welfare Act. As has been said, very little of that money has been spent. There was £1,000,000 due to the West Indies in 1940–41, and another £1,000,000 due in 1941–42; and I think less than £1,000,000 has been spent up to date on welfare in the West Indies. Of the £10,000,000 which the Colonial Welfare Act provided in 1940, £8,000,000 has not yet been spent. Surely there is some slackness and lack of will to meet the situation. One of the first steps would be to get this House into close touch with the position by setting up a Parliamentary Committee in order that they might give attention to these problems.
I want to touch upon one other topic only. In the reconstruction work which has now to be faced in our Colonial dependencies, there is something more to be done than merely finding the money, although that is very important. The economic problems are fundamental, and the situation has to be tackled side by side with the fact that we have to give our Colonial subjects a realisation that they too have to be partners and have to play a part in that reconstruction. We have to state our attitude both before the end of the war and after the war in regard to the future government of the Colonies. Are we to be content to be sneered at and continue to rule our great Colonies from Whitehall? Are not the natives of these Colonies to have the rights for which we stand as democrats to develop their own countries and to realise that they are their own countries? In the West Indies alone we have no fewer than 27 Colonies, and we have had most of them for periods varying from 200 to 300 years. They have been in our continuous rule, and not one of them has self-government to-day. In not one of them can the people say that they rule or have any responsible part. They cannot appoint the Governor or the Colonial Secretary; these are appointments

that are made in Whitehall. But that kind of thing has to come to an end, and we have to recognise their right, as responsible citizens in their own country, to play their full part in the post-war new world which we are visualising.
It is not good enough for a Minister of the Government to say, as he said the other day—I refer to Lord Croft—that we are going to lift them into partnership, and into partnership in our own wisdom, in our own good time, and into full self-expression. They want to know why they cannot have self-expression now and not in our own good time. It is for the Prime Minister to say, in the atmosphere which has come out of this war and as a result of the obligation we have entered upon with other nations, that the whole world shall be open for all to play their part. For him to say that what we have we shall hold, is disturbing to our Allies. It is criticised in America. Wendell Willkie has said that his idea of the Atlantic Charter applies not only to European and American countries but to all countries in every part of the world. I appeal to the Under-Secretary to press upon his Minister that the least that can be done is for some form of Colonial charter to be announced at an early date, so that the native people will know that, when the war is over, they can go forward as full partners, playing their part in the building of the new world to which we are all looking forward after the war.
I do not suggest that it is possible for us to accord to or to establish complete self-government in all our Colonies. In a large number of them, in the West Indian Colonies and the West African Colonies on the coasts, in the large towns of 70,000 people, you could establish pretty well complete self-government. As far as the African Colonies are concerned, in the hinterland where the natives are more backward it is not a possible proposition, but at least we could get a drive on towards democratising as far as possible the various forms of native rule and organisation in those backward Colonies and also provide at the same time for Nigeria, Kenya, and all the Colonies to be able to send their coloured representatives to a legislative council or assembly to take part in the legislative work for the future. I put that forward as a suggestion. The world is looking for a sincere declaration that we are now prepared to play our part and to democratise our Colonies.

Mr. de Rothschild: Like all the speakers who have spoken on this Amendment, I wish to open my speech by giving my congratulations to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman who has now taken over the onerous function of the Colonies. I also want to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary, who is still acting as his coadjutor in his present position. He has given the House, on the occasions he has spoken, a very clear and masterly lead on the development of the Colonies, and I hope he will continue in his office and that there will be shown some continuity of policy. I do not wish to impugn in any way the new Secretary of State—I am certain he will carry out his duties with distinction and every success—but it is hard on any man to take over at the present time the direction of Colonial affairs without having been in touch with the trend of public opinion and work in the Colonial Office at the present time. I also want to thank the hon. Gentlemen who moved and seconded the Amendment for bringing the Colonial question once more before the House, and that, I think, on the only occasion, speaking of my fairly considerable experience of Parliamentary duties, on the Debate on the Address.
The main proposal which has been put forward is one for the Development Board. I welcome discussion on this, although I gather that opinions on it are widely divergent. The hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Wight (Squadron-Leader Macdonald) put forward a proposal for a statutory committee comprising many members, but, so far as I could make out, very few Members of the House of Commons or the House of Lords. On the other hand, the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Riley) put forward a proposal for a body entirely composed of Members of the two Houses. Both these proposals are new departures from our ancient Parliamentary tradition, and I much regret the comparison that was put forward by the hon. Member in bringing forth the example of the French Parliament, which used these commissions extensively thereby creating great dissensions and being rendered utterly ineffective. If a body of this kind was set up in this country—and I do not deprecate the setting-up of such a body—I hope it will not be a body with such wide and large powers. I think it may be useful as an advisory body to the Colonial

Office, but I do not think we should destroy the work which is being carried on by that great Government Department.
I agree that a change of Ministers does rather throw the direction of our Colonial policy into the hands of the officials of the Colonial Office, which makes it rather bureaucratic, and I think it would be a good thing if a check was put on that by a committee of Members of the two Houses. The origin of the idea of this committee was really the Development Fund which was set up a few years ago. However, this Fund, as has been pointed out, has rather too narrow a scope, and I think that if a board of Members of this House was set up to control only expenditure by this small body, it would be only a small thing for it to do. It requires a much wider outlook, because the Colonial question is one which has interested the world very greatly during the last 10 years. To the rest of the world the Colonial question is really one of distribution and not merely production, a point which, I think, was omitted by the Mover of the Amendment. It is useless, I suggest, to stress increased production in our Colonies without having a scheme of distribution.
Let me stress the importance of tropical produce to the world. In our history tropical produce has always been in demand. Indeed, King Solomon sent his men to Africa and Asia to bring back spices, gold, precious stones, rare timbers, ebony and ivory, and it was a period of great prosperity. The Roman Empire in its most prosperous time made much use of tropical and sub-tropical produce, and we know that throughout mediaeval times and during the Renaissance Argosies laden with spices and dyes came from the East and the African coast. Late in the 19th century and at the beginning of this century great prosperity was shown by increased trade and the increased importation into Europe of tropical produce from the Colonies. If we want an index of the prosperity of civilisation or of an era, we shall find it in the extent to which it has made us of its tropical produce. To-day, the improvement in our civilisation has created needs which were quite unknown in previous ages, and these needs, as we know, have been principally created by the advance of science and by mechanical efficiency which have revolutionised ideas of scale and tempo of life. Many of these resources and much of the products required


to supply these needs are to be found within the Colonial areas of the world. The importance of Colonial produce to-day was clearly exemplified last Tuesday week in this House, when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Economic Warfare indicated how important the products of North Africa, which were now denied to Germany and France, were to those two countries before the American landings in Algiers and North Africa. Even from that small part of the world that small addition to France's resources showed how necessary and important were the tropical and subtropical products to the industrial and mechanical life of a nation, not only in war-time but in peace.
When the clamour was raised a few years before the war by other countries which were called "The have-nots" they did not desire only and mainly the responsibility of Colonial administration. What they wanted was control of Colonial areas in order to obtain tropical products and also military and strategic positions. After the war the problem of non-Colonial Powers will not have changed, and this problem will have to be solved if we hope for peaceful, prosperous international relations. Therefore, I welcome in this respect the words spoken the other day by the Deputy Prime Minister, when he said that we would endeavour to make the products of the Colonies accessible to all the world. If we approach this question of Colonial development from this end, not only shall we be laying one of the most important foundation stones of world peace and prosperity, but we shall also be conferring the largest measure of benefit on the Colonies themselves. Our aim for the Colonies has always been to lead them towards adult status, an aim which singularly agrees with that of America, as shown in a letter in "The Times" to-day, signed by the most eminent Colonial administrator of our day and the most responsible authority on Colonial affairs to-day, Lord Lugard. But political advancement is not possible without economic independence. By that I mean freedom from outside help and control, independence of charitable and semi-charitable measures. Political independence can be achieved only by economically developed countries carrying on a mutually beneficial exchange of goods with other countries.
The Colonies may well find their opportunity of such advancement in the needs of the world after the war, just as, I submit, the post-war world may find its salvation in the resources of the Colonies. The problem of distribution was great before the war, but it will be far greater when the world lays down its arms. The post-war world will not be like the one we knew before the war, a world of leisure and wealth and order. It will be an impoverished world; there will be a state of affairs unparalleled since the days of the Thirty Years' War—destruction and disorganisation in Europe, China, Malaya, New Guinea, the Dutch Colonies—in every area where fighting is taking place. After the war, industries are bound to be at a standstill, and it will take years to regenerate them and begin production again. During that time, these countries will be in desperate need of commodities of all sorts, and in addition their Exchequers will be empty and they will have no produce of their own to give in return for the goods they wish to obtain. In pre-war years, as we know, the main obstacles to trade were artificial, such as tariff walls and quotas. Those of us who sat on the Colonial and Empire Marketing Boards, set up in 1937 by Lord Harlech, know that those were the difficulties we encountered in trying to establish the trade of the Colonies. Let us hope the war will at least sweep away these barriers. But the barrier of impoverishment will remain.
It is imperative that some machinery should be set up—a board, a council or a department of the Colonial Office—to devise some means of helping the Colonies to sell their produce. Since this is an international problem of the first magnitude, it is important that any body set up should work in the closest co-operation with similar bodies and organisations in other countries. It is very important that there should be-co-operation between the Colonial Powers producing similar commodities in order to co-ordinate both production and distribution. A splendid example of inter-Colonial co-operation is now to be found in West Africa. There the Free French, the Free Belgians and ourselves are co-operating together from an economic point of view, and now, to increase the orbit, as far as trade and industry are concerned, the great Dependency of Dakar has been added.
But this is only a beginning. Every opportunity must be taken of extending the field of co-operation. All the Colonial territories of the world, except those of Spain and Portugal, are now within the orbit of the United Nations. The Colonial Powers alone cannot set the wheels of trade and industry turning. Britain and the United States must take the lead. Only the other day, Mr. Roosevelt gave his assurance that the United States will do this, not as a work of philanthropy, but, he said, for the benefit of its own pocket book, its own safety and its own future security from attack. It is essential that we should co-operate with the United States; it will be costly, but it must be done. Certainly, the idea of planning is one which is repugnant to many of us, but these are exceptional conditions in which we live and we shall have to face exceptional circumstances after the war. The law of supply and demand may well have broken down. Colossal tasks will face us. The only choice may be between muddling along and planning, until the world is rehabilitated and the economic machine is once more functioning normally. I think planning will have to be adopted in some measure. As Sir William Beveridge urged the other day, some regard must be paid to this in internal matters.
Machinery will have to be set up for financing the vast development machines which will be necessary in the Colonies. Perhaps there may be Government utility companies or corporations, or money may be lent by private bodies under guarantee, or under international auspices. There could be provision for repayment as productivity is increased. A report has been issued lately in America by the American Committee on African Affairs, which is well known as an enlightened body. Its members are educators, missionaries, and students of Africa. They suggest that the principle of Lease-lend should be applied to the development of public work in Africa. I hope this suggestion will be adopted, not only as regards public works, but also as regards economic development, such as the checking of soil erosion, the opening of communications, mineral development, and so on. America is already well mixed up with us in the West Indies and in West Africa, and I hope this mixing up will continue.
With regard to international administration, a matter which is so often raised, I think one word is sufficient. We cannot at the present time consider the appointment of German or Italian administrators in our Colonies, or in any Colonies, after the years of Nazi and Fascist education to which they have been submitted. If we are to exclude our enemies and their satellites from Colonial administration, we shall create a position very similar to that created by the guilt clause in the Versailles Treaty. It is unnecessary to do that. We need not have a body of international administrators. We are quite capable of administering our Colonies ourselves. To discuss this matter at the present time is pointless and useless. I do not know what may happen in 30 or 40 years' time, but it is doubtful whether in our lifetime we can consider allowing our present enemies to look after the natives whose care has been entrusted to us. But we look forward to co-operation with the United States of America.
Mr. Winant a few weeks ago spoke of the wide divergence of view between the United States and ourselves. Everything should be done to close that gap. Ignorance in America, however, is quite excusable when we think how widespread it is here. Little instruction is given in Colonial affairs in our schools and universities, and this ignorance produces irresponsibility, as we have seen even in the House. Hon. Members will recall a speech only a few days ago by a Member on the other side of the Gangway, who said that if Members thought we were going through this in order to keep their Malayan swamps they were greatly mistaken. He seemed not to have known that Malaya, with the development that it has had in the last 30 or 40 years, has become a great productive region. He did not seem to know that it was flourishing, that it had a loyal people and that the standard of living of the natives had been very much improved. He did not know that the inhabitants of the country had given treasure to this country and spent large sums in order to prosecute the war. Hardly any of our Colonies have been more generous and more forthcoming in support of the war than these loyal Malayans. [Interruption.] I gather that the hon. Member of whom I am speaking was not the only ignorant Member in the House.

Mr. John Dugdale: Can the hon. Member say why the Malayan natives stood by in the streets while the Japs came in?

Mr. de Rothschild: They are a peaceful people, and we have not trained them to fight. We did not expect to use them as cannon fodder and so they looked on.

Mr. Sloan: Is the hon. Member aware that, when the tin dredging company was making 50 per cent. or 60 per cent. profit, the Malayan workers were working for 1s. to 1s. 10d. a day?

Mr. de Rothschild: That is a perfect red herring drawn across my path, and I am not going to trouble to answer. It is completely irrelevant to what I am saying. I much regret that the hon. Member did not realise all this. Perhaps hon. Members are making these interjections because they think their speeches and interjections are of no importance and have no results, but they have an effect. They are printed in the American Press, and they misguide American opinion. Mr. Willkie, who has shown his interest in the development and reconstruction of Europe and has always been a friend of ours ever since we have been in difficulties with Germany, the other day cast animadversions on a remark by the Prime Minister that what we have we hold. This is all the more serious because he has been such a good friend. Only yesterday in Toronto I believe he advocated a better understanding between our two nations, not only during but after the war. His first speech, however, need not be taken too seriously, because we all remember that just before the Americans landed in Algeria he thought it wise and useful to prod the American generals into greater action. He may have done this not merely with the idea of prodding the American generals but of chloroforming the generals in enemy countries. On this occasion he may also have been flying a kite in order to make his Republican friends lift their eyes to heaven.
A year ago I urged on the Colonial Office the necessity of a representative in the United States. The then Under-Secretary announced that an official of this sort had been appointed in order to encourage the export of Colonial products to America. I consider that this official should have far wider functions and

should be on a level with the representatives of the Dominions in order to represent the interests of the Colonial peoples, especially at present, when we are sending such a spate of produce from our Colonies to America. If there was such an official, speeches like that of Mr. Willkie could not be made. Another great friend of ours who has always helped us, Senator Pepper, added his condiment to the political salad. He said he wondered if the Prime Minister would have had the temerity to speak that sentence into the ears of a dying soldier or sailor. What a misguided remark. After all, the Prime Minister, when he made that very pregnant statement, meant that we should hold fast by our duties and responsibilities. Let us remember that he is the same man who, after Dunkirk, said we had to stand by our responsibilities and duties. He is the same man who, nearly 40 years ago, stood by General Smuts and Botha and helped them to draw up the Constitution of South Africa, which gave her freedom and independence. I should like to read a few lines from a speech the Prime Minister made in 1937, when he said:
In all the coalitions or leagues of nations we have led in successive centuries against tyranny or military over-lordship, we have always hitherto succeeded because our cause was inseparable from the cause of freedom and progress. The British Empire marches, and can only march, with the larger hopes of mankind.
Such is the Empire which he does not wish to liquidate. Before America was forced into the war by the events at Pearl Harbour this country fought a successful and distinguished campaign in Ethiopia, which liberated that country and opened up the Red Sea. Were it not for that campaign, it is very doubtful whether the present African undertaking could have been carried out, whether General Montgomery could have had his victories and whether General Eisenhower could lead that great host at present in Algeria.
That great company which fought in Abyssinia with General Cunningham were men from many parts of Africa. The report of the campaign showed what a magnificent part they played. These men were descended from families who were savages in the jungle only a generation or two ago. To-day they are educated and civilised. They fought with us on terms of equality with our own men. They have


become part and parcel of a civilised community of nations and of the British Empire. They were splendid soldiers whether giving orders or obeying them, and they died as they lived in the field on terms of absolute equality with men of this country. All these men were volunteers. None were drafted. When they were killed or wounded they made their sacrifice freely. They made it as much for their own country, for their own Africa, as they did for the America of Mr. Willkie and Senator Pepper. They laid down their lives as much for the sake of the new world as for that of the old.

Licut.-Colonel Rayner: The measures which have been proposed by the Mover and Seconder of the Amendment and to some extent by the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. de Rothschild) will be of no avail if the Empire is to be liquidated after the war. I should like to consider whether it is in fact standing in such danger. Is the British Empire likely to liquidate itself? All indications point the other way. Nothing binds so firmly as freedom, and if one moves about the Colonies, one finds the people more fiercely proud of being British than we are ourselves. That remark by the Jamaican negro to the Frenchman who had jostled him, "I think you forget, sir, that we defeated you at Waterloo," is typical of the spirit we find all over the Colonies. The splendid telegram sent in 1940 by Sir Sikander Hyat Khan, the Prime Minister of the Punjab, to the Government of this country, "Tell the British people that if there is any trouble in the Middle East, I will raise them a million volunteers without any pressure from the Government or any other Englishman," is also typical of the same spirit. There is the true India, not that imaginary land where chota peg drinking pukka sahibs exploit Indians for British profit. Although the Empire has a few murky pages in its history, it has never been just a convenient capitalist frame for exploitation, as some hon. Members sometimes suggest to us in this House. From the formation of the merchant adventurers in 1553 until the East India Company found its responsibilities too great for it, big business played a major part in building up the Empire. Since then, rather than exploiting it too much, it has not supported it enough. The sparse population of many of our Colonies, the

few people that edge the Australian Saucer and the then life line of Canada, have not offered sufficient opportunities to big business out for quick profits rather than enduring interests. I think that in future we shall have to turn it back towards the Empire, harnessing it perhaps to modern schemes of immigration. Free peoples do like to trade with each other.
Does our Whitehall administration tend to liquidate the Empire? It is powerful, as the Proposer and Seconder have pointed out, owing to frequent changes of Ministers. We know that it has tended to irritate the Empire from time to time, and that it is reluctant to relinquish any power it may have achieved. We may have trouble with it in this country on that account after the war, but not so the Empire. The Colonies are equal, and we were taught such a lesson in liquidation by the loss of the American Colonies in 1783 by a muddling, meddling Whitehall bureaucracy, no administration is likely to forget. Since then the process of converting the Colonies into Dominions may have tarried, but the system of local government by local men in distant dependencies has been practised by Whitehall in a manner no other Empire can boast. Herr Hitler, of course, longs to divide our Empire, and the Gracious Speech has reminded us that our enemies yet remain powerful.
Both the German Empire and the British Empire have been built up on the instalment system, the one by instalments of autocracy and aggression and the other by instalments of freedom, and our loosely ruled Empire has always been a festering irritation to super-efficient Germany. Yet every gesture they have made, every blow they have aimed, the fusion of Germany into a great military Power in 1871, the annexation of the Pacific Islands in 1900, the last war and now this one, have increased the strength which our Empire draws from unity. It must annoy Hitler quite a lot to think that it was Germany which originated the British Empire, for it was the Hanseatic League which drove our merchant adventurers to explore the seas by trying to run England as a sheep farm for Germany. Perhaps that is why Hitler, when he has defeated us, intends to try the same game again.
Thus the wheel does a full turn over four centuries and rather than being broken on it, the British Empire is


strengthened immeasurably. Yet strangely enough the war aims of Germany and the war aims of some of our American friends seem to converge over our unfortunate British Empire. One thing that we are not fighting for, say the editors of "Life," is to hold the British Empire together. We have guaranteed the Empires of France, Spain, Holland and Portugal, but we have not guaranteed British possessions. May I, as one who has spent several Thanksgiving days in America, and who is the proud owner of a small American property, give a back bencher's views on these pretensions? American school books are full, naturally enough, of the unjust treatment of young Colonies by the Mother Country, which led to the War of Independence. Those earliest impressions so influence some Americans that the word "possession" gives just as false an impression to them of the British Empire as the word "Imperial" gives to some of us.
It is a pity that we have failed to hang a truer picture on the American line. It is a pity that in the past we have not explained to the Americans that, as the Seconder of the Amendment has mentioned, there is no export duty on any commodity out of any Colony, and that thus long ago we put one provision of the Atlantic Charter into effect. Let us tell them now and of how very early in the history of Canada we gave such equal civil and religious rights to the French settlers as most of the minorities of Europe are still longing for; of how when we had conquered Mysore we restored an ancient dynasty which rules to this day; of how we run India with about 50,000 white troops, one good-humoured British soldier to every 7,000 Indians; of how we run our whole Colonial Africa of 40,000,000 natives with no white regiment at all to back up authority; of how the only thing that is shameful about our Empire are those people in this country who picture it to the world as a creature of blood and iron. After those tense months in 1940, when we stood alone against giant foes, it is wonderfully inspiring now to fight shoulder to shoulder with American warriors, but I would ask those editors and their friends not to presume on help that they may incidentally give to the British Empire. After all, after we had settled our ancient quarrel, the British Navy was for many decades the first line of defence of

the Monroe doctrine, and they should admit that they still owe a little help to our own particular Monroe doctrine. America, an Empire in herself, stretching from the temperate zone almost to the tropics, is rich in all manner of natural wealth and possesses about 14 acres of land for each of her citizens. Britain, with what remains of her natural resources after 1,000 years of use, has only got about one acre of land for each of her citizens and can only remain a first-class Power as the motherland and centre of younger nations. The last thing surely that our Allies can want is to see us decline to a small, unimportant little land floating off the coast of Europe.
No one is more entitled to stand up for the Empire than the present Prime Minister. Talking to the Conference of British Premiers 20 years ago he said:
There is one ideal that the British Empire can set before itself. There should be no barrier of race, colour or creed which should prevent any man reaching the station he is fitted for.
Since then, whether he has carried all the guns of Cabinet rank or has operated as a powerful privateer from the corner seat below the Gangway, he has fought for that principle. He is not the man to be rattled by public opinion, Allied or otherwise, into an unsatisfactory course of action. He has said, that our Colonial people are neither cattle to be sold nor slaves to be dispersed, and having observed the unholy mess of the last 20 years of uneconomic self-determination, and the simple but unpromising experiment in international control at Tangier, he is not going lightly to hand over our people to less practised hands. We shall welcome American co-operation in the development of our Empire, as we have already welcomed it in the Caribbean, but it must remain the responsibility of the Commonwealth people. After all, it is the common people, to use the fashionable phrase, who have forged and fed the Empire since its inception. Those adventurers of Elizabethan days, some of them ancestral constituents of mine, were just the same captains, mates and men as those who adventure everything to bring us food and munitions to-day Those thousands of families who left England to escape persecution in the 17th century, and to look for wealth after the Napoleonic wars, were the same sort of people who to-day grumble at our restrictions and ask for


more money for better work. That is why the whole Empire is full of MacDonalds, Joneses and Smiths, and why Empire kinship is a kinship of the common people. Why is it, then, that such a minority of our people seem to take an interest in the British Empire? There are possibly several reasons. Undoubtedly the cutthroat competition of the early 1900's, extending to Imperial trade, gave rise to the suspicion that the Empire was really a capitalist convenience. Undoubtedly the difficulties of emigration in recent times has dulled memories of kinship.
Undoubtedly the tendency to bracket the Empire with the Conservative party has played its part. But the Empire was never more needed than it is to-day, and therefore the question of making people realise what it means is an urgent one. To this small country the strains and stresses of peace may be more severe than those of war. We must export or starve, and to export against the new self-sufficiency of other nations, including the Dominions, will not be too easy. What the Empire will want, however, is the best men, and we shall have them, men hardened in the crucible of war and to whom adventure has become second nature. Given a readiness on the part of the Empire to take whole families, including the older members, we ought to be able to work out modern schemes of immigration which will be of profit to all. I hope that plans are being worked out on those lines. My right hon. Friend who presides over the Board of Education presides over a Department which has given less value for money than almost any other branch of our administration. I hope that among his other reforms he will teach the relations between the Empire and our own people as regularly as algebra and arithmetic.
I would finally suggest to one or two of my colleagues, particularly the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan)—I am sorry he is not here now, but I tried to find him—that they might learn a little bit more about the Empire. Americans have some excuse for misunderstanding it, but hon. Members of this House have none. In his speech on the Address the other day the hon. Member made remarks about the Empire which must have pleased Hitler quite a lot. These Englishmen, he would say, will one day foul their own nest once too often. The hon. Gentleman, like so many others not

serving, claimed to know what the Services were fighting for. I have commanded a good many hundreds of men over the last two years, all of whom have been able to come and see me off the record for an hour every week, and I can assure the hon. Member that 99 men out of 100 are fighting to preserve the Empire rather than to destroy it. He also said that he represented the common people; so do I, and so do we all. I suggest to him that if he does his level best to undermine that organisation which makes England what she is and to break up the only League of Nations that has ever worked, he represents them rather indifferently. All of us have a grave responsibility towards the Empire. The Union Jack stands for great things and looks just as well behind a Labour platform as it does behind a Conservative platform. Let us assume that responsibility.

Mr. David Grenfell: I will join with hon. Members to-day who have made reference to the return to the Government bench of my right hon. and gallant Friend the Colonial Secretary, and extend my congratulations to him. I will not comment upon the frequent changes that have taken place at the Colonial Office, because that might be deemed to be a criticism of the exalted personage who is responsible for those changes. I also have moved from one side of the House to the other, and I should not show that I have any concern in the rapid changes that sometimes take place in one Department after another. I join also in congratulating my right hon. Friend who is to reply to-day. He has been in his office for a longer period, and he has almost endeared himself—if that is the right word in politics—to the House by the way in which he has made his appearance here and dealt with the public business of his Department.
I would first say a word to my hon. Friend behind me. I offer him a word of advice too. These are difficult times, and when we think aloud we must be careful to go to some secluded place to give vent to all our disquiet, particularly of a domestic or family character. In this House, while we speak very freely about our problems and while we criticise, as I have to do even to-day, we ought not to supply material for further propaganda abroad, from either side of this House.


Things were said in this House a few weeks ago. I do not think they helped German propaganda, but they may do so if they are repeated every time this House meets and if people rise up to express disapproval or condemnation of their colleagues in this House. After all, we are an Assembly unique in the world, and there is here represented a greater variety of experience, interest, outlook, training and environment than in any Parliament in the history of the world. You cannot expect everybody to be alike. This House would not be enriched if everybody spoke with the same accent, looked through the same glasses and saw everything from the same point of view.
Some hon. Members may not be altogether enamoured of the Empire, but I confess to a pride in what our people have done in building up this association, a community which is not racial and which transcends racialism. It is an approach towards a world community which is in the process of being amalgamated. It has to receive the attention of the craftsmen in community building, and it must derive considerable impetus and drive from the events of the day. The crisis of mankind in general affects each and every part of the British Commonwealth of Nations and affects their relations with the rest of the world. It would be wrong to assume that we must hold on to old things, old ideas and old relationships. The world is changing, and we, too, must conform to the gradually evolving different shape of things to be in the world.
To-day we were to be invited to discuss an Amendment. I confess my disappointment. We have not discussed that Amendment. I think the Mover of it said that he hoped we would not spend much time in discussing abstract policies, but he did nothing else. They were all abstractions. He reminded me of the man who could not see the wood for the trees. He entirely lost sight of the importance of mankind involved in these problems, and he paid too close an attention to separate pieces of administrative machinery or of policy, which may be all right in their place; but too many of them were pushed before us to-day to enable full use to be made of the right hon. Member's experience and knowledge. I do not see why this Amendment was worded in this way. It was not necessary to have an

Amendment on the Order Paper welcoming the desire of the Government to improve the conditions of people in the Colonies. Indeed, I do not know whether it is in Order to do so. There was familiar method, however, in his presenting the Amendment in that form, which was the generous coating of sugary sentiment coming before the pill.
The pill was something quite different. The proposal that we are discussing is to establish a statutory body, the relation of which to Parliament appears very vague and uncertain, from what has been said, and with unprecedented power, outside the scope of ordinary bodies set up by this House. Its power would rival, or would even dominate, the power of the Colonial Office itself.

Squadron-Leader Macdonald: The proposal is that the body should be responsible to the Secretary of State, who is responsible to this House.

Mr. Grenfell: I do not know whether this kind of overlapping can be done as mathematically and exactly as all that, but the impression I have is that this body would be a rival to the Colonial Office.

Squadron-Leader Donner: I spoke on the subject on 24th June. The point is that the body should be advisory in status.

Mr. Grenfell: That is why I complain that that was not said to-day. This thing has not been set out properly. It is all delightfully vague. You can make it mean anything, from the speeches to-day, or mean nothing. I do not think to-day has been well spent. The hon. and gallant Member who last spoke could have said it all in Totnes without an Amendment to the Address. He could have said it in any hall in his constituency or anywhere else, and it would have been quite in order, but in this Debate it was not too helpful. All I could get from the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Wight (Squadron-Leader Macdonald) was that he was acknowledging the goodness, of the Government in placing at the disposal of the Colonial Office and administration a sum of £5,500,000 a year for the next 10 years—£55,000,000—and was complaining that that sum was not being spent for the purpose for which it had been granted by this House.
He said that if it is not used, if it is not spent up, the machinery to spend it is not in existence. He proposed that we should drop the idea and use the £5,500,000 to guarantee the interest on some loan to be used somewhere for something. He proposes to convert this grant, which is intended for the welfare, improvement and advancement of the people of the Colonies, to a guarantee for interest on a loan to be used by the people not directly, in my opinion, answerable to the House, as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman is. You cannot sub-contract an Empire, and you cannot transfer your responsibilities. If this House is tired of its responsibilities, it has no right to hold the Empire.
This proposal is not really as imperialistic as it is capitalistic and financial. The things we want done can be done by the Colonial Office aided by an Advisory Committee. They have already gone part of the way. They have appointed a committee, but they have not appointed the larger committee which has been promised. I think there is to be a statement made to the House at an early date on that point. I am not quite sure where we stand in that regard, but no doubt the right hon. Gentleman will answer the House in his own way and in his own time. We all welcome the expressed desire of the Government to promote the advancement of the people of the Colonies, and we also welcome the statement that the response of all the people in all the territories to the war effort has been so gratifying. I do not take the view that that must be due to the kindness and extreme generosity with which they have been treated. We have to take account of the moral resources of mankind. People who are not treated justly sometimes rally to the support of large causes.
These people have come to us nobly serving in uniform, many have served also without. They have shared the burden of patrolling the seas and maintaining the sea routes with our people. In the port where I live I see them coming in in large numbers, men who have come from the West Indies and West Africa, these dark-skinned brothers of ours. I have always been very proud to see them come-in and make themselves at home among us. But do not let us assume that they do it because they must do it out of gratitude and have no grievances. That

would be a wrong interpretation. They have their grievances. I would like the hon. Member to talk to a few of them. But their grievances do not prevent them from serving, risking their lives; they lose their lives as readily as white men. They have grievances and will speak to one about them, of grievances in the City of London and even in the town in which I live.

Major Petherick: Is it not probably the case that such people as the hon. Member refers to would not have rallied round the Crown and Great Britain unless they considered the benefits they had received had by far outweighed the grievances they had?

Mr. Grenfell: In this war there is something greater than ordinary individual experiences. There are men in humble circumstances in this country who have recognised that here is a menace to the progress of mankind, that here is a threat to liberty and to personality. In this war there are millions of people who have been stirred to the depths of their mind and personality and they are fighting. The majority of the people in the world, Chinese, Africans and Indians, the coloured people—two-thirds of the anti-Axis forces are either Africans or Chinese or Indians—are men not of our colour, not of our outlook on life, not even, for the large part, citizens of the British Empire, but still they fight the Axis.
I would not stress the response of the peoples of the Empire as being because we have been so good to them. They have not been mollicoddled. They have suffered hardship and indignities. I do not say that that is the final stamp of un-worthiness in respect either of ourselves in this House or the people to which we belong. These injustices have existed all through the ages of mankind, but it is certainty our business here to-day, if we are to help in the making of a new world, to try to put our house in order as far as we can so as to go with a clean record towards our own people to engage in the building-up of new world conditions where there shall be no distinction of colour and race. That is the ideal. It is promised in the Charters already published, and I hope it will be more clearly and expressly approached in that larger and more universal Charter which will


come at the end of this war when we come to the building of the new world.
I think that the way to solve our Colonial problems is to proceed on the lines we have mapped out. If we have £5,500,000 not being used, then the machinery is wrong. It may be said that we have too many irons in the fire in wartime. I do not think that we have too many irons but that there is too little fire of enthusiasm for the development of the Empire, or we should have used this £5,500,000. Let us kindle that fire of enthusiasm and obligation and see that the resources of this House and the resources of the Colonial Service shall be used to the full extent. I do not think that £5,500,000 a year is enough. General Smuts, a very great man who does know Africa, said, I think, 12 or 14 years ago, that Africa must always be the black man's country. The population of Africa is about 50,000,000 or 60,000,000 people. We shall get far less than we could out of our association with that dark Continent unless we nurse and build up the man-power of that Continent.
The man-power of Africa will not be adequate for the large schemes of expansion of which Africa is capable unless the Africans are very much better looked after than they have been. We have to build social services, health services, and education and to improve both the quality and number of the man-power units at our disposal. White men, General Smuts, I think, said, are not racially suited for hard work in that Continent; the black man is superior, I think he said, for the work to be done there for some considerable time. He may be right in saying the white man cannot do certain kinds of work in tropical climates as well as black men can. The rough pioneering work must be done by men who are accustomed to the climate where they are to carry out their duties. If Africa is to be developed, it must have sufficient man-power and must not only have quantity but quality. We must build that man-power up. We must take up less of the African's time away from his home. He must spend less of his time travelling aimlessly hundreds of miles to his work because of the primitive way in which we still organise the man-power resources of that country. There is enormous scope for this kind of work in Africa. Until we have spent

this £5,500,000 let us not start another hare and leave the hare we are already following, and perhaps lose both because of the uncertainty of our chase. We are also faced with international problems affecting the Empire.
Something has been said to-day about the West Indies. I myself have had the privilege of travelling a good deal in our so-called Empire. I worked in Canada nearly 40 years ago as a coalminer, and I have seen Australia and New Zealand and parts of Africa, too; and I have never had occasion to be ashamed of being connected with this family of nations. I know people who do not share my views. I came through Singapore just two years ago, after the war had started. I flew across from Australia, and spent a few hours at Singapore. I confess that it was the one place in the world where I thought the white men were not doing their job. I was there far too short a time to regard myself as an authority, but it looked to me as if they were too soft, and were just enjoying themselves. That was the only place in which I noticed that sort of thing. There is no excuse for any alienation between ourselves and the Malay people. They should have been on good terms with us. They were allowed a good deal of autonomy in their native States, and under their own rulers, but there appeared to be stupid class distinctions, which seemed to me to have destroyed the opportunity for good feeling in Malaya.
The West Indies are one of the oldest of our settlements. The population there are not the aborigines. They went there as slaves, taken in our ships. They were taken there by Drake and other heroes, and I confess I am proud of my family connection with those Cornish buccaneering toughs, who went there, across the ocean, in 30-ton boats. [Interruption.] They were brave men—that is why I am proud of them—but they were mistaken in their trade. They took the population there, and we have been responsible for them ever since. Someone has said that there are MacDonalds and Smiths and Joneses there. Yes, I am told that there are even some Joneses who are coloured men. We have all been joined in that idea of claiming to own men, and to whip, drive, and compel men; and it is all wrong. The idea that the islanders of


the Caribbean Sea will always be inferior, and will never qualify for self-government, is entirely wrong. There is a belief in this country that if you are a real man and a clean man you play cricket. Well, the Jamaicans play cricket as well as we do. That is proof of the excellence of their character, proof of their willingness and capacity to play the game fairly. We do not play the game even now. I hope that the Secretary of State, coming with his new broom, will join his assiduous companion on that bench and set these things in order without delay. There is hunger in Jamaica; there is a creeping economic depression; there is mass unemployment; there are imprisonments, because of rebellious spirits. It is a good thing that there are rebellious spirits, but those people are held to be guilty of all kinds of seditious purposes, because of the economic hardships of the country in which they live, largely caused by the war, but partly by the failure of generosity on our part. We have held those islands for 200 or 300 years. We should have done better there.
We have our problems with America over the Caribbean Sea. We know that changes have taken place by consent between those two Allies. When peace comes there will be further changes of sovereign relations in respect of those islands and other countries, and I wonder whether we cannot make some start in setting up a self-governing federation in the Caribbean Sea. Could it not be begun by the Secretary of State; or could he not prepare the way for the acceptance of that idea of self-government in the West Indies? Then could we not think of a West African Federation. The hon. Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg) referred to geographical groups. Let us study the possibility of bringing those groups together to add to their respective economic strengths, so that they can build up a joint standard of achievement which will bring them to a higher economic and political level. Those are some of the points to which I would like the Minister to pay attention.
Something has been said about the investment of capital in these Colonies of ours for the benefit of the native populations. I know that there is very great exploitation, and very scant reward to men employed in manual work by people who have no interest at all in our African Colonies except to extract the largest

possible share of the production for their own use. I understand that in the Gold Coast the value of gold production is about £3,000,000 a year, and that the wages paid for the production of that gold are less; than 10 per cent. of the value of the gold. You can go from one African Colony to another to examine the results of mineral exploitation. The value of mineral production in Northern Rhodesia is over £12,000,000 a year, and the wages paid are less than £500,000 a year. The proportion paid to the labourer is far too small. He does not get enough for himself; he does not get enough for the family to which he belongs, or for the larger community with which he shares his responsibilities. Exploitation is impoverishing Africa, for the benefit of a few manipulators of shares in this country. It is our business in this House to see that those people are better looked after. This problem is really a human problem.
If it is not that, it is nothing. Because of superior knowledge, science, technical organisation and political sagacity we claim trusteeship. Let is be a trusteeship,—I would not differ from that—but a trustee does not waste and dissipate the inheritance for which he is responsible. He does not squander it as we have done. I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues and to the House, I do not think that I or anyone else has done justice to the subject. We should come back to these Colonial problems with our minds prepared with more progressive and far better ideas for organising the resources, the material and man-power in these countries, first of all for the benefit of the people of the Colonies to whom we do lip service to-day. When they are prosperous and produce more generously, they will take more from us as we take more from them, and we shall be adding to the prosperity and happiness of the people for whom we are trustees.

Sir Malcolm Robertson: We have just listened to a somewhat impassioned speech in many directions. The hon. Member began with what I think commands the approval of a large number of Members of this House—deprecating what I might call washing our dirty linen in public and giving material for Dr. Goebbels and Lord Haw-Haw. I regret to think that the major part of his subsequent speech was extremely helpful to Dr.


Goebbels. [Interruption.] That is my view. We have been discussing the policies of the Colonial Empire. It is only fair and right to point out that when this vital matter—of vital interest not only to this country but indeed to the whole world—is discussed, the attendance of the House is perhaps not what might be expected from the representatives of a great Empire. I notice that in particular on the Front Bench opposite, whether it is an Opposition bench or not, the attendance is extremely sparse, Hon. Members cannot deny that. A large part of this Debate so far has been devoted more or less to the material side of the Colonies, that is to say, practically to exploitation for the benefit of the people in this country or the companies concerned. The fact really is that the history of the government and administration of our Colonies is by no means so black a page in our own history as many people, not only in this House but in the country, assume that it is.
The other day we were subjected to a considerable attack from across the Atlantic. That was largely based on ignorance. The question is whether we have any right to attack the people on the other side for their ignorance on the ground that we ourselves are very intimately acquainted with the problems of the Colonies and have taken a very great interest in them. It is not unfair to point out that for three years the Colonial Estimates were not debated in this House, and certainly on the last occasion when they were you could have counted the House out at any minute. The attendance to-day is larger, but it is not such as to convince the people in the United States that we are really serious in our interest in the Colonial Empire. It has been suggested that we ought to do more about teaching the story of the Empire and our achievements in the Empire in our schools and in our universities. I should be—theoretically I am—in very cordial agreement with that, but the President of the Board of Education might find some difficulty in making room in the curricula. I would point out the claims that are made from various sides, all of them justified in themselves, on our children. They have to learn something presumably about their own country in which they live. It is now suggested that they should have special hours in the week devoted to the

United States of North America. It has been suggested—perhaps some hon. Members may not know it—that they ought to have special hours devoted to the history of Scandinavia. It has been suggested that special hours should be devoted to South America. What is going to happen to the unfortunate child? I do not think that it is possible to do that, but I would make the suggestion that it would be useful if films of the British Empire could be produced in large quantities and that they could be shown every week for an hour in our schools and subsequently in our universities. Then what may happen? The child wishes to be interested and is shown the films. Later on, when he is earning his living and gets spare time, he may say that he is interested in films dealing with a particular part of the Empire. Where is he to go? We have at present a number of Imperial and Colonial societies. We have the Imperial Institute, but to the average man that Institute is looked upon as some sort of highbrow concern of which he knows very little, and I do not think he will be liable to go there to derive instruction or benefit unless—and I put this to the right hon. Gentleman—some steps are taken to broadcast and to let it be known what the Imperial Institute could do, or alternatively, to set up some other kind of institute where the young people after their school and/or university could easily go and get the information they required about the particular Colonies in which they were interested.
The lamentable fact is that the people of these Islands really know very little about the Empire. One hon. Member talked just now about the coloured men who are fighting for us and said that they had their grievances. I think that is probably the greatest tribute we could pay to the administration of our Colonies. The people of these Islands have always had their grievances, and we have always expressed them freely. These coloured men do the same. But I think the hon. Member will admit that the real fact is that they are fighting loyally, gallantly and efficiently on our side, and all honour to them. When all is said and done, that in itself must be a tribute to our Colonial administration. We have brought these Colonies up to a certain point, but now they are demanding something more; they are reaching the adult age, and we have


to provide greater educational facilities for them.
That is where the British Council, of which I am chairman, comes in. We are already exploring the ground in the West Indies, West Africa and East Africa and we have institutes in Malta, Cyprus and all over the Middle East, notably in Malta, where the institute has been carried on throughout this war in spite of all the bombing that has taken place, carried on with great gallantry and great persistence, for which the people of the island are most grateful. Here is a suggestion. The British Council was originally formed in order to project the British Empire to foreign countries and to make its outlook on life better known. Certain Members of this House asked about the Colonies, and we looked into that, with the result that the British Council is now starting work in the Colonies. But these things cannot be done for nothing, and if we are to develop an interest among ourselves in the Colonies and an interest in this country in the Colonies, it means a considerable expenditure of money and that we must have the man-power available. There are terrific demands on man and woman-power in this country at the moment, but, even so, I think a few dozen or a few hundred people could be spared for this great moral, spiritual and educational effort. I think suitable men would be better employed in this direction than on shouldering rifles or throwing bombs. We have to have imagination; we have to realise that the spiritual values are of vital importance not only in wartime but even more so in peace-time.
We talk about post-war planning. Are we thinking of post-war planning in the Colonies and in the Empire? Surely, the Dominions should, and indeed must, be brought in. I would like the British Council ultimately to develop into a British Empire Council, so that we could draw our men from the whole British Empire—the Dominions, India, and the Colonies. Those are things that we have to consider. At present we are all rather adrift. We must take a greater spiritual and educational interest in the Empire. There is one more thing I wish to say, in conclusion. I would like to ask my right hon. Friend who is to wind up the Debate whether the Government have considered what is to happen about the Mandated Territories. It is inconceivable that they

should be handed back to the Germans, the Japanese and the Italians. It is a difficult proposition, but certainly, it is one with which we shall have to deal, and I suggest it is time we began to think about those territories now, obviously consulting the United States of America with regard to them.

Mr. Sorensen: I think that a good many hon. Members were rather disappointed that the hon. Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg) did not elaborate more fully the actual terms of his Amendment. Since that time the Debate has wandered fairly widely over the whole field of Colonial affairs, not without some value, I am sure; but I must confess that I would have liked the hon. Member for Altrincham to have told us a little more clearly what was in his mind and how the proposal in his Amendment could benefit not merely the British Empire but the human beings who happen to live within it. Before passing to other matters, I would like to refer to the speech of the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Sir M. Robertson), who seemed to deprecate the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) and to suggest that my hon. Friend was rather washing dirty linen in public to the advantage of Dr. Goebbels. I suggest it would be of far greater advantage to Dr. Goebbels if one were to pretend to have no dirty linen to wash.

Sir M. Robertson: I agree with the hon. Member. I was only trying to answer the hon. Member for Gower.

Mr. Sorensen: I suggest that although there are some hon. Members who do not like references to the dark spots within the Empire, it is well appreciated, not only by Dr. Goebbels but by the whole thinking world, that those dark spots exist, and for us to pretend that they do not, or to romanticise what has been in some cases a process of exploitation, is to perform a very grave disservice to British humanity. The hon. Member for Altrincham argued that we are not now dealing with abstract principles but dealing empirically with matters as they really are in order to try to find out what needs to be done. Although to many people that may seem attractive, I maintain that it is quite impossible to divorce our acts from our principles. Even if we are not completely conscious of those principles, they are operative within our


subconscious minds. If a person is building a house, he has to know what kind of house he is going to build, for otherwise he will merely build a shanty or an edifice that will collapse at the first gust of wind. Therefore, when we consider the British Empire at the present time, and the Colonial Empire in particular, it is not enough to say "Let us get on with the job, find out what is needed and then try to meet the need."
Surely, our job is to have some principle beforehand which will enable us to do the job in a particular way. I do not think it is enough merely to take for granted the principles and the policies which have prevailed heretofore. In fact, it is rather amusing to notice how many Members criticise those of us who have a particular point of view and who are generally described as being to the Left, These hon. Members argue that we are entering into a world of controversy and that we should be like them and not be controversial at all. In fact, even the alleged non-controversial attitude in itself takes for granted certain assumptions which we wish to challenge, and the opener of the Debate did so himself. He took for granted that the historic British Imperialist policy need not be challenged and that all we had to do was to see how it could be applied in this juncture of our affairs.
Similarly he and others emphasised the sentiment that we are proud of the British Empire and that there is nothing in it that we need regret. I agree that there is much in our British history of which we can be proud, but it is sheer self-righteousness and hypocrisy to blind our eyes to the fact that there is much of which we should be completely ashamed. One hon. Member referred romantically to Sir Francis Drake and other Elizabethan heroes. I am aware that they have frequently been quoted as inspiring Elizabethan Christians, but we know that in fact they were often slave traders of the most unscrupulous and ruthless character. [Interruption.] As a matter of fact Drake was associated with the slave trade and derived considerable benefit from it. Everyone knows that British history has frequently been written according to the desires of those who have an Imperialistic outlook on life. We all have certain prejudices or principles and it is not alone

the facts as they are, but our interpretation of them which matters. The interpretation of Imperialism from a romantic standpoint is not necessarily the truth.
A good many of us recognise that an objective survey of British Imperial history shows that those human beings who built up the British Empire were actuated by very mixed motives. No one can doubt that. War and conquest have been among the ways in which the British Empire has been created. Equally adventure and enterprise have played their part. And again, settlement and purchase have played their part. Far be it from me to assume that I am better than anyone else. I, too, am a creature of mixed motives. All I am pleading for is that we should be honest and not romanticise facts which, whatever their origin, we now know are reprehensible. We shall gain and not lose if we frankly admit that, instead of pretending we have no dirty linen and are all the time dressed in white angelic sheets.
The next point I would like to make is this. There is an assumption in some minds that the British Empire exists as a kind of Imperialist Estate. There was a Member of this House in the last Debate on Colonial matters who used that very phrase, and I think it is fairly symbolic of the minds of quite a number of people. They approach the Colonies primarily from the standpoint of ownership, as an estate from which they may derive benefit. Incidentally the inhabitants of the Colonies may benefit just as the poor man was supposed to benefit from the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. But our chief concern is how they are to bring advantage to us, and the glib way in which so many speak of the Colonies like that, is unfortunately far too frequent to-day. So long as it remains frequent, it will prevent us from doing justice to the 70,000,000 or 80,000,000 people who are under our Colonial flag. If the various portions of our Colonial Empire had had no economic or strategic advantage to give us, it is most unlikely that we should ever have settled in them or have secured them for our Empire. There was, for instance, a certain attractiveness about the West Coast of Africa which took us there, with other rival Powers, in the first place. There was economic attractiveness which led us to transport condemned slaves to the islands of the Caribbean Sea and then to develop plantations. We are not in any


of those parts of the world for philanthropic reasons, although I do not deny that philanthropic factors entered later. Our first motive, however, was economic.
That is no peculiarity of the British race. It may be true, as Mark Twain said on a celebrated occasion, that the Biblical phrase, "The meek shall inherit the earth," referred to the English because we had obviously done so. That, however, was a typical American reflection on ourselves. In any case, the factors of domination and exploitation are, I submit, even to my friends on this side, at the heart of our Imperialism rather than the factor of commonwealth. Those factors are by no means our own peculiarity. They are common to a greater or less degree to ourselves and indeed even the black races themselves. In Africa and elsewhere black people in the past have exploited their own fellow citizens or neighbours. Therefore, we do well to recognise that the tendency or impulse in us all to exploit and dominate, is a human characteristic. That does not mean that it is right, for if life has any significance at all it lies precisely in the fact that whatever may have been our origin we judge man not by what he has been but what he can become. If that be so, we take an ethical standpoint and should ask ourselves whether we are committed still to support and defend principles which historically have had a significance, but which, judged from any ethical standard, are self-condemned.
That is why I suggest that there is not enough enlightenment in the proposal made by the hon. Member who proposed the Amendment. He proposes in all good faith that there should be a Colonial Development Board. He does so because he recognises that the areas which are now called colonies have not been sufficiently developed. I agree with him completely that if we are to see any considerable social progress on the part of Colonial peoples in Africa or the Caribbean Sea or elsewhere there must be much more economic development than has taken place up to now. That development should be for the benefit both of the inhabitants there and of the whole wide world. But the point is, How are we going to do it? It is well to appreciate that the economic advantage of the Colonial Empire as such has, I am afraid, often been grossly overrated. In my

estimate the direct normal interest derived from British investments in the Colonial Empire as such, as distinct from the Dominions on the one hand or India on the other, is probably not more than £15,000,000 to £20,000,000, at the outside. That in itself indicates that even from a capitalist standard development has not proceeded very far.
It is true that there are other advantages, the advantage, for instance, that a large number of people have settled in those areas, many of whom draw from them very substantial salaries. Perhaps altogether some 80,000 are to-day, or in normal times, receiving salaries in some portion of the Colonial Empire, strictly speaking. That is an advantage to us, besides which there are certain indirect advantages. On the other hand, what have the Colonial peoples got out of it? It is true that they have gained something. They have gained a few schools, a few hospitals, a few roads. They can now buy cheap bicycles and domestic articles. But what is that compared with their actual needs? I do not suppose that more than 15 to 20 per cent., at the outside, of the black inhabitants of our Colonial Empire have any semblance of education. Compare that with what has been achieved in the Soviet Union. I say that not as one who blindly worships all things Bolshevist. Nevertheless, in 25 years or thereabouts Russia has dissolved illiteracy, and if she can do it we could have done it had there been real purpose and intention in the matter.

Sir E. Grigg: I do not wish to interrupt my hon. Friend, for I have great sympathy with his argument, but no doubt he recalls that the Russian Government controls absolutely all the revenue of the Russian Soviets and can apply it exactly as it likes.

Mr. Sorensen: I thoroughly appreciate that, and am not necessarily saying that we should copy the methods of Russia; but if that can be achieved under Communism we who live under our own democracy ought to prove that we can do just as well, and we could do so provided we recognise that it would be to the interest of the British people, and, indeed, of the human race, if we invested money in the Colonies, not on a capitalistic basis but on a Government basis. Some slight step has been taken in that direction. The


£5,000,000 set on one side for Colonial development is a sign of gathering wisdom, but if we are to proceed along those lines we must not expect returns right away. We should have a long-term investment policy which would enable us to pour into our Colonies much greater sums than now. We should invest Government money for Government and social purposes, in the belief that ultimately it will give a tremendous reward to humanity, as I am sure it would. At first the reward would take a more human form—better education, better hospitals, better political intelligence. That, in turn, I am positive, would further enrich those countries economically, and both the peoples in the Colonies and ourselves ultimately would gain. Therefore, with the alleged purpose of the Colonial Development Board I am in agreement, but I do not believe this is the method by which it should be achieved.
In fact, I am afraid that I must confess to a certain suspicion of it, because however this Colonial Development Board is to be linked up with the Government I am afraid there would be greater encouragement to the exploitation of the Colonial areas under the auspices of big business, and I want to avoid that. Whilst I am entirely in agreement with the Amendment so far as economic development of the Colonies is concerned, I submit that this would be achieved far better by this Government and this House realising their responsibilities and determining, even though it cost us money here, to pour our own British Government money into the Colonies, first because it would be ethically sound and secondly because, economically it would in the end pay all concerned.
My final word, therefore, is to plead that, at an early date, we should have a statement of what the Government's policy is to be. I suggest it at a very early date for the benefit of the Colonial peoples, who most certainly are awakening at the present time in a way which has never occurred before. We should tell them exactly what our intentions are so that they can look forward to the implementation of those intentions when the war ends. In the forefront, I would most emphatically assert that the essential contents of the Atlantic Charter, especially point 3, shall be progressively applied to them. If it is alleged that some of them

are unfit for self-government, let us not assume that they are intrinsically inferior to ourselves. Anthropologists have done their best to find out whether there is an intrinsic inferiority on the part of Colonial peoples, and as yet have found no clear proof of it whatsoever. After all, we were barbarians 2,000 years ago, and some of us still are, I am afraid. We have had to grow. The apparent incapacity of the early British, and of the even more barbaric Anglo-Saxons, has dissolved, in the course of centuries. I am sure that the same principle will apply to Africa.
I am sure that Rudolph Dunbar, Paul Robeson, and Booker Washington are but symbols of the tremendous capacity of the peoples who come from Africa. Let us not put that all on one side and assume that we are the "herrenvolk" who are for all time to dominate the African people. We should have faith in them and set ourselves to the task of realising that capacity, so that the black people and the white people together may co-operate for the good of us all. Lord Hailey in his "African Survey" said:
The political future which British policy has assigned to the African Colonies must be understood to be that of self-government, based on representative institutions.
He said that; let us implement it. Of course, it was referred to in the Atlantic Charter, but I very much regret that the Prime Minister and others have, from that time onwards and since the signing of the Charter, seemed to belittle the inner content of it. We must hasten to emphasise the fact that the essence of the Atlantic Charter applies to all people, wherever they may be.
If I might put this matter in another way, I would say that we should concentrate on wide educational expansion. I believe we should try to cultivate the home market of the Colonies and make them less reliant upon overseas trade. We should preserve the utmost civil liberty. I also believe that there should be the grouping to which the Mover of the Amendment referred, although I prefer to call it free federation. I believe the time is ripe when we should seriously consider federating the Caribbean islands and the East and West African Colonies. If that were done on the principle of real, and complete self-government, and we held out that criterion to which we should work, there would be a wonderful response from


these people, which would be of tremendous benefit not only to ourselves but to the whole of mankind. The real question which confronts us now is, Do we or do we not believe that the black peoples are to be exploited or, on the other hand, that they must co-operate with us? If they are to co-operate with us, however backward some may seem to be, we must bend ourselves in service to them so that on a basis of equality with ourselves we can all prove to the world that democracy is a necessity of human fulfilment.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Harold Macmillan): I hope my hon. Friend who has just spoken will not think me discourteous if I do not follow in any detail the rather discursive series of arguments which he put before us. I shall not join in the controversy which he mentioned about the denigration or the whitewashing of Drake or other Elizabethan worthies, but one or two observations, among a great many with which I agreed, seemed to me a little strange. He said that it was not possible to divorce our acts from our principles, but I should have thought that one of the great troubles of mankind was that they were continually doing so. I believe in the doctrine of original sin, but he appears to believe in the doctrine of the perfectivity of man. He went on to say that facts do not matter, but only the interpretation of facts. That doctrine, Sir, would explain very many strange and misleading things which you hear in the course of our Debates.

Mr. Sorensen: I am quite sure that my right hon. Friend does not mean to be unfair. I merely wish to say that what I said was that it was not only facts that mattered but their interpretation.

Mr. Macmillan: I did not wish to be unfair. I only wished to tease my hon. Friend a little. The House will, I am sure, absolve me of any undue egotism, and my right hon. Friend the new Colonial Secretary, I know, will acquit me of any disloyalty to himself if I say frankly that this is for me a somewhat melancholy occasion. It has been my fortune during the last two and a half years to serve four Ministers, the present Home Secretary, the present Minister of Supply, Lord Beaverbrook, and Lord Cranborne. This is a rather remarkable

experience. It would be difficult to imagine four men of such great but varied qualities. Like the Colonial Empire, the most striking thing about them is their diversity. It so happened that with the first three I had no previous acquaintance when I took office under them, but I like to feel that I have formed with them lasting friendships. With Lord Cranborne I have had a long and intimate personal friendship which has lasted now for more than 30 years, both through shadow and sunshine, unclouded and unbroken, and I am therefore naturally sorry that our partnership has come to an end. I think my Noble Friend can claim that during his tenure, although short, he has left his mark upon the Colonial Office. He brought to it that combination of great charm of manner and absolute inflexibility of decision, which is his peculiar gift. And with his natural modesty, no one would be more surprised than Lord Cranborne at the tributes which have been paid to his work at the Colonial Office. They are certainly deserved.
If we are unfortunate in losing Lord Cranborne, we are lucky in his successor. It may be unusual, but I hope I am not transgressing the ordinary reticences if I say to my right hon. and gallant Friend that his return to high office is welcomed by Members of all parties in this House. He brings to the Colonial Office talents of a very high order. Would he think it impertinent of me to express the hope that his tenure of this post will be a long one, because I think it must be recognised that there is a widespread feeling both in this House, as expressed in the Debate to-day, and in the country and in the Colonial Empire, that continuity of office and policy are greatly to be desired? I said that my right hon. and gallant Friend brought great talents—considerable political experience, a flexible and resourceful mind, and rapidity of thought and decision. But I know the House will recognise that, however rapid a worker he might be, he could hardly be expected to cover the important questions raised in this Amendment in the space of time between kissing hands on Tuesday and to-day. It is for this reason that he has asked me to wind up the Debate on his behalf.
From a purely Parliamentary point of view, recent events have somewhat simplified my task. My noble Friend had been just over nine months in office. He might


reasonably have been expected to be about to produce a policy. I had rather hoped to have played the part of midwife, but my right hon. and gallant Friend has not been nine days in office, and therefore any progeny so rapidly delivered would have the imputation of illegitimacy. Nevertheless, this Debate, although no longer a suitable occasion for any pronouncement of policy, has given us all [Interruption]—not all, but I hope that my hon. Friend will join us at a later date—an opportunity for an agreeable, intellectual exercise. I clearly cannot commit my right hon. and gallant Friend to any decision. Perhaps the best thing I can do, therefore, is to make some general observations and reflections, based on my experience of the Colonial Office. Like the Archbishop of Canterbury, when he is discussing the banking system, I shall be speaking merely in my personal capacity. Ex cathedra statements will follow in due course from my right hon. and gallant Friend, but nothing that I shall say will be binding on the faithful.
I welcome this Debate very much. In the first place, it has given the House the opportunity of listening to a speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg) which was one of the most interesting and thoughtful I have ever had the opportunity of listening to in this House. It was based on long experience, great knowledge, and enthusiasm, and it delighted the House. It enabled my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight (Squadron-Leader Macdonald) to give us again, in a short and very practical contribution, the result of his long interest in and experience of Colonial affairs. At any rate, the main subject of this Debate is not controversial. Colonial development is not controversial. There are, of course, questions of private enterprise and Government enterprise, and how far both should be used; and I think that most of us will agree that a combination of all will be necessary for the full development of the Colonial Empire. My hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Riley) lays more weight on one, and other Members more weight on another; but the main object is the same, the well-being of the Colonial people. The machinery must be effective for the immediate purpose, and it must be conducive to what I conceive to be the ultimate purpose—

that is, as well as the material improvement to increase the association of the Colonial people with and their concern in the management of their own affairs.
There are always two tendencies, centripetal and centrifugal, one aiming at greater centralisation and the other at devolution. The believers in one say, "Let us have a great panjandrum"—or, as my hon. Friend says, a panjandrum in commission—and the other extreme say that each of 50 or 60 territories should operate independently without any central control. The extreme of centralisation is to centralise everything in London. It may take either the form of a Board such as is described in this Amendment or it may take other forms. I would like to recall exactly what my hon. Friend meant by this new Development Board. He said, the last time we debated the subject:
What should be the composition and functions of this Board? In the first place, it should be a statutory body, under the Secretary of State for the Colonies. It should have a full-time chairman and secretary and should deal with such questions as strategy, and as all the Services are involved, it should have a representative of the Secretariat of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. There should be a full-time member for each of the following: Economy and finance, health, education and housing, and all the Supply Departments. In addition, the Board should have power to co-opt business men from outside to serve on sub-committees to deal with questions of production, both for home and export, and also with imports, communications, ports, roads, railways, air and river transport. It should have someone responsible for electricity, irrigation, and power. It should be directly responsible to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and its functions should be to co-ordinate and consolidate the work of all the various committees. It should take over the Colonial Department fund to which reference has been made."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th June, 1942; cols. 2027–8, Vol. 380.]
With that the hon. Gentleman seemed satisfied. I can only say, "Some problem; some board." This Board does not seem to differ very much from the Colonial Office itself or even in some respects from the War Cabinet.

Squadron-Leader Macdonald: This Board might do something for the Colonial Office.

Mr. Macmillan: I am not a constitutional pundit. The hon. Member for Gower (Mr. D. Grenfell), in a most interesting speech in which he was good enough to say some kind things about myself, and therefore I thought it a still


better speech, stated the difficulties. There are constitutional difficulties. I would not myself reject on these pedantic grounds something that was likely to work. I realise that such an organisation would preserve continuity of policy. That is an important point; yet I cannot help wondering whether any Colonial Secretary, any even of these transient figures, these dim phantoms which flit across the Colonial stage, would be prepared to accept such a shadowy kind of plan left to them by this Board. I am in doubt whether there would not be a duplication of effort all through between the Colonial Office and the functions of the Board.
The next plan is to have a Parliamentary Committee. That is the plan which was put forward in the Debate last time by the hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Creech Jones), the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) and the hon. Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. Harvey). It was developed to-day by the Member for Dewsbury in an interesting speech and supported by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. de Rothschild). The same difficulty seems to arise, although perhaps not in so acute a form. If the Parliamentary Committee is executive, then it is taking away the constitutional powers and duties of the Colonial Secretary. If it is advisory, I am still inclined to feel that we do better with the specialised Advisory Committees such as those on education, labour, medical questions and agriculture, which, as everybody knows, are an important part of the Colonial Office machinery on which many Members of Parliament, I am glad to say, are willing to serve and help us.
The third method is one of more centralisation in the Colonial Office itself, strengthened in every way possible to perform its task and in particular by the two Committees contemplated at the time of the passing of the Colonial Welfare and Development Act. The first of these two Committees was to control the allocation of money for research purposes. That, as the hon. Member for Gower said, has been appointed under Lord Hailey as Chairman. It is supported by a Committee to deal with applied research rather than pure research under Lord Hankey's chairmanship. The second of these—the Committee of which he asked me to say something to-day—was to be appointed to

co-ordinate and approve the schemes under the Colonial Welfare and Development Act. At present it has not been thought advisable to appoint it quite as originally contemplated, because the scope of such schemes is necessarily limited by war conditions, but my right hon. and gallant Friend will review and consider his policy in the light of the arguments addressed to-day. I still feel that whether we are centralised at the Colonial Office or in a Board or Parliamentary Committee or anything else, I shall expect the drive to come from individuals rather than committees. Lord Beaverbrook used to say that committees take the punch out of war. I do not go so far as that, but committees can become a dangerous piece of modern organisation. Though they have their uses, assuming them to be technical or a panel of experts for a particular purpose, they can be methods of avoiding action rather than of promoting action.
Nevertheless, if the Colonial Office has to undertake its responsibility, if must, of course, be organised for that purpose, and it has to conceive of the Department as being divided into the two functions of the day-to-day current policy and the forward planning, assisted by appropriate experts whom they can bring in to help. In the economic department, for instance, with which I have been specially concerned, the first job has been to look after war supplies, production and the movement of production in and out of the Colonies. That pant of the job has been organised efficiently with a fine team of men to do their job. The other half of it must be to forward the work of planning of all the problems which have been raised to-day. Then there is planning of the future, plans which we can afterwards put into effect.
It is quite true that a fourth suggestion has been made. It is that there should be appointed in every Ministry an additional Parliamentary Secretary. I observe that there was a particularly favourable response to this suggestion in some quarters of the House. I am naturally flattered by the assumption that the appointment of another Parliamentary Secretary would be a cure for all the ills to which human flesh is heir. They are, indeed, a very fine team of men. There is absolutely no task which they cannot satisfactorily perform, but I am not absolutely convinced, although I am ready to be convinced, of


the truth of the proposition even if each new member of this admittedly respectable class was provided with the assistance of another committee.
All these are centralising methods. There is the extreme decentralising plan. That is, that each Government should be wholly responsible for its own territory, that all schemes should be worked out by local governments and that full responsibility should rest upon them. There would be an advantage in that there would be local interest and pride in the development of their own territories. After all, we do not share the horrible Nazi conception; we do not, like Hitler, regard the coloured people as sub-human. They are people very much like ourselves. It is true that some of them live in a still primitive society, but things are moving quickly. They have made more advance in a generation than our ancestors made in 1,000 years. How would we accept the idea that all development of these Islands was to be centrally planned by a body of wise men sitting 2,000 or 3,000 miles away? However well it was done, we would rather have some hand in it ourselves. It is true that the Colonial Governments are to a great extent controlled by Europeans, but the Colonial peoples are becoming more and more associated with them, either directly or indirectly, and, therefore, there is, to my mind, a great advantage in associating local knowledge and local opinion with this forward economic planning with welfare and development. But the disadvantage of its being done entirely locally is that there may not be sufficient drive, knowledge and enthusiasm.
That brings me to the main part of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham who moved the Amendment. He suggested that we should use the principle of regional grouping which combined, or attempted to combine, the advantages of centralisation and devolution. Incidentally, this is the universal problem of organisation, and we found it in supply and production just as we are finding it here. I do not intend, under my formula, to deal with the regional proposal from the political point of view—

Dr. Morgan: Why not?

Mr. Macmillan: I think the hon. Gentleman would admit that it would be very

improper for me and unfair to my right hon. and gallant Friend who has just taken over his great responsibility. Moreover, many of the questions raised by the Mover of the Amendment, as he would be the first to admit, raise very wide and delicate problems far beyond the range of the Colonial Office. I think that the conception of regional grouping, as he described it, has a great future, but admittedly it involves the solution of many problems of a very delicate kind, both in Africa and the West Indies. But in the field of welfare and economic development, which we are supposed to be discussing to-day, regionalism can be applied without the fear of these pitfalls, and, therefore, we aim at and favour the extension of this principle. It is really the system which has been developed in the West Indies.
My hon. Friend then asked what has been the result of the West Indian Report. Might I describe to the House for a few minutes the functions of Sir Frank Stockdale, the Controller? As a result of that report the Controller was appointed. Sir Frank Stockdale was the first to be chosen. He had had long experience in the Colonial service, both at home and abroad. In particular, he possessed a wide technical knowledge of agricultural questions. He is charged with a double duty. First, he is provided with a body of experts to undertake a constant review of the needs of the West Indies. For this purpose he has an agricultural, a medical, a labour, a social welfare and an economic adviser. Those who are most acquainted with the work of these gentlemen will, I think, be the first to pay a very high tribute to what they have already done. Then, armed with this advice, he is able to communicate directly with the Governors of each Colony in the area with regard to matters of general administration and the schemes that may be promoted under the Act. He is also in direct communication with the Secretary of State, and the schemes put forward for the various Colonies in the area are submitted on his authority and in consultation with him. This machinery, in other words, is a kind of projection of the Colonial Office into the region or area. Like many other developments in our history, it has been experimental, but I am convinced that upon these lines lies an idea which is capable of considerable extension and of great value. Up to now,


in spite of all the difficulties of transport and material, we have been able to promote approved schemes for the West Indies up to the expenditure of about £1,500,000.
But his functions are far more than that. His advice and knowledge make available to all the local Governments the most modern developments of scientific knowledge and economic thought. He is able to place at their disposal and fortify their deliberations with a body of expert opinion which would not readily be available to them in any other way. The same regional organisation has grown up for the purposes of war both in East Africa and West Africa. For the purposes of war, we have organised the Governors' Conferences in East Africa and West Africa, and under them, the Supply Boards and all the machinery for war production, and so on; and I should be certainly very unwilling to see that experiment disappear into the void after the war without leaving something behind upon which we can build. The advantage of these methods in the economic and development field is that, as I said, we can build upon them without immediately raising some of the far more delicate and difficult matters the importance of which, I know, my hon. Friend would be the first to appreciate. Therefore, I venture to take, as a kind of method of getting a compromise between these two extremes, the idea which he has put forward and which I would like to say we are now very largely operating.
Before I come to some further observations I would like to make, there are some matters with which I think I ought to deal concerning the matter of propaganda. They were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely, the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Wight, and by the hon. and gallant Member for Totnes (Lieut.-Colonel Rayner), in his very interesting speech, the very fine, manly speech we have learned to expect from him. It was also raised by the hon. Member for Gower, who very well kept the balance in this very difficult matter of propaganda—first, about what we should say to each other, and then about what should we say about each other to other people. He kept that balance, I thought, very well. Most of his speech consisted of the sound, progressive ideas which I should

have expected him to put forward. As for propaganda to our own people, my right hon. Friend the Member of Mitcham (Sir M. Robertson) reminded us that, if we are to get the teaching in the schools that we need, we have to add continually to the already crowded syllabus, and my experience, drawn from a very different field, is that, however many books people may read or buy, unless they are put down in the syllabus for the local examination they will not be very widely used. Nevertheless, I think our Public Relations Department, which in most offices is accused of being too active—only in the Colonial Office are we reproved for not spending sufficient money and increasing our activities—is doing under very difficult circumstances a very good job. We are trying to get going films and propaganda of the kind that my hon. Friend would like, and I think we shall be able to secure satisfactory results from the work that we have been preparing in recent months.
When it comes to propaganda abroad, I am not an expert upon that. I still believe in the old-fashioned view that honest deeds and good purposes will be the best propaganda in the long run. Like the Prime Minister, I have the advantage of being able to claim that I am born of an American mother, and I know something of America. I do not think we ought to be too sensitive about everything they say of us. They say some very dreadful things about each other. Every country has different points of view, differently expressed. I prefer what I should call the principle of Lend-Lease to the principle of Luce—"Life." I do not think we could do better—in many respects we should do worse—than to leave our defence in the hands of some of our friends, and we have very good friends. I never heard a better expression of the general problems that lie before the Empire than in a leading article in "The Washington Post" some days ago. It ended with a sentence which seemed to me profoundly wise and true. It was in answer to some attack made upon this country. It said:
The problem of the Colonies is far too complicated to be solved either by a single pattern or by high minded clichés and humanitarian day dreams, and can be solved only by marrying idealism to reality.
There are a great many questions which we have to deal with in our forward plan-


ning. On the last occasion on which I addressed the House I confined myself to problems which had been brought upon us by the war. In some parts of the Empire we have had to give every possible effort to the increase of war production. In other parts our main anxiety has been to preserve aa reasonable level the life of the people. Economics in wartime remind one of the Red Queen's difficulties. You have to keep running very fast to stay where you are, and to get anywhere at all you have to run most terribly fast. That really is our problem. Every time we think we are catching up something comes which interferes with us.
I would like to take what has been perhaps the most difficult problem of all from the point of view of maintaining the economic life, employment and health of the people—the problem of the West Indies. It is common knowledge that during the past year the situation has been dominated by the intensive U-boat warfare. The House will not expect me, for security reasons, to go in detail into all the plans taken to deal with it, but I can assure Members that at a very early stage plans were made for the best possible use of merchant tonnage for the establishment of strategic supplies and reserves. So far as the Eastern Caribbean is concerned, the whole inter-island schooner and steamer transport is operated as a single whole. We have had a difficult spring and summer, but for my part I feel that our worst anxieties are over. With regard to employment and food, the situation has necessarily been bad because of the violent disturbance of the normal economic life of the islands. We have taken steps to deal with it on a wide basis. Nearly £1,500,000 has been spent on schemes under the Welfare Act, and another £1,500,000 has been given by the Treasury to support the banana industry, partly to keep the industry alive and partly to provide schemes of local foodstuffs production. We have taken steps to make it compulsory in the West Indies to set aside portions of the land for food production. In Trinidad alone 10,000 acres are under food production, and swamp reclamation as an unemployment scheme has been undertaken in Jamaica and Trinidad. We are making an examination of it in British Guiana. Rice production

is being pushed on wherever it can be done, but that is not easy, because swamp rice production on any large scale is a comparatively new project. In British Guiana we are making the first of a big series of drainage schemes which we hope will revolutionise rice growing in that Colony. Many other schemes are going ahead. I have been asked whether we could promote schemes for processing and preserving foodstuffs, but that requires plant and storage. Nevertheless, in this direction we have not been altogether unsuccessful, by a combination of cajolery and pressure upon the Supply Ministries. Immense efforts have been made by the Departments and by the Governments on the spot to deal with these difficulties.
When we come to the future we have, of course, to deal with planning. I have tried to describe the machinery which I think is best adapted to it—the organisation of the Colonial Office, expert opinion, regional devolution, and bringing in the local interests and enthusiasts, but there are a great many difficult problems, and it is not so easy in the Colonial Empire to lay down hard and fast plans, because there are so many unknown factors. For instance, what will be the conditions of the post-war world? What will be the state of international currencies? Will there be currency agreements between countries, and how many parts of the world will they cover? What will be the commodity situation? Will there be some attempt to equate production and demand of raw materials and commodities throughout the world on an international basis, or will there be a purely laisser faire competitive price-cutting organisation of the world as regards primary products? Will there be an old system or will there be a new system? Shall we be in a period of expansion when the problem in the Colonies will be to increase capital development and facilities for dealing with the problem of an expanding demand for primary production, or in a deflationary period when it will be more important to increase production in local smaller industries and the interchange of productions between the Colonies themselves? All those questions have to be considered, and, without somewhat guessing at them we have, perhaps, to make alternative plans having regard to different possibilities. But I think I should remind the House that not all the effort of the war will be lost. Take the provision of facili-


ties such as railways, roads, harbours and docks. A good many of them have been provided not out of the Colonial Welfare Development Fund but out of funds charged to the general war account. There will be a great deal of fresh capital equipment in Africa after the war is over which is not charged to that particular Fund. In dealing with all these problems there is a good field of work, there is plenty of work to do.
Apart from these economic and development schemes we have to consider, as I see it, the possibility of increased co-operative arrangements in Colonial production. I agree with what was said by my hon. Friend who has studied the methods of the French, the Russians and the Chinese about the extraordinary developments they have achieved by the use of some of these co-operative methods in recent years. We have to consider welfare schemes in their broadest sense—medical schemes and preventive medicine as well as curative. As regards education, nothing is more important than that there should be a real attack, a mass attack, upon illiteracy. This must be pressed forward, and vocational education must be carried forward with the same degree of importance as purely literary education. There is a great deal to be done in the realm of social welfare, for boys' clubs, dramatic societies, for all the measures which can impart to a people a sense of culture in life. And then, of course, there is the application of modern scientific research, both pure research and applied research, to great regional problems such as locust control—an acute problem—the tsetse fly and soil erosion. All these are efforts which we must develop with this machinery.
Therefore, although I am afraid that what I have said may not, as regards the machinery that we have to adopt, greatly commend itself to all hon. Members, I hope that I have shown them that if we do not take a particular method, it is not because of any unwillingness to proceed rapidly with our task. The tasks that I have described are great ones, great and inspiring. If I have stressed the material side of them, it is not because I am not aware of the spiritual side. I realise as well as other Members the rapidly changing situation. I fully understand that a new political consciousness is being awakened in many of our Colonies which cannot be restrained but which must

be developed upon sound lines. So great is the variety and diversity of the problems that I do not think that one standardised policy can be laid down equally applicable to all territories. But the great achievements of Colonial administrators in the past have deserved and have won the confidence of the people. It is for us to build upon those foundations.
There will be divergent views about the exact machinery to be employed. There can be no difference of view about the things to be done and the broad methods to be used. Those are two-fold: The steady and continuous association of Colonial peoples with their own welfare and development and a powerful and sustained effort by all concerned, from the highest to the humblest of officials at home and on the spot, in unremitting and enthusiastic co-operation in this high endeavour. The spur, the drive, the energy, the sense of urgency, the spirit of romance, the glamour of this great adventure—they can be set only by the Colonial Secretary himself. I am persuaded that my right hon. and gallant Friend has the quality and determination to give this lead, and I say, Let us wish him "God Speed" in his task.

Sir E. Grigg: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Main Question again proposed.

Ordered, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—[Major Sir James Edmondson.]

Debate to be resumed upon the next Sitting Day.

Orders of the Day — EMERGENCY POWERS (DEFENCE) ACT, 1939

Resolved,
That the Potatoes (1942 Crop) (Charges) Order, 1942, dated 31st October, 1942, made by the Treasury under Section 2 of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1939, a copy of which was presented to this House on 10th November in the last Session of Parliament, be approved."—[Mr. Mabane.]

Orders of the Day — SUNDAY CINEMATOGRAPH ENTERTAINMENTS

Resolved,
That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department extending Section I of the Sunday Entertainments Act,


1932, to the Urban District of Newtown and Llanllwchaiarn, a copy of which was presented to this House on 24th November, be approved."—[Sir J. Edmondson.]

Orders of the Day — DISPOSAL AND CUSTODY OF DOCUMENTS

Ordered,
That a Select Committee be appointed to examine all documents and records in the custody or control of any officer of the House; to report which of these may be destroyed and which are of sufficient historical interest to justify their preservation; and to recommend methods for securing the safe custody of any classes of documents which ought to be preserved.

Committee nominated of Sir Percy Harris, Sir Dennis Herbert, Major Milner, Mr. Nicolson and Mr. Pickthorn.

Ordered,
That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records.

Ordered,
That Three be the quorum."—[Sir J. Edmondson.]

Orders of the Day — ESSENTIAL WORK ORDER

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Sir J. Edmondson.]

Mr. Silkin: I desire to raise a point relating to the Essential Work Order, and I have given notice of it to my hon. Friend. I hope that he will be able to give me a satisfactory assurance. The Essential Work Order was made for the purpose of preventing the enticement of workers engaged in war work from one war factory to another, and on the whole it has served its purpose. The essence of the Essential Work Order is that no worker may leave a scheduled undertaking without the consent of the National Service officer. On the other hand, no employer at such an undertaking may dismiss a worker except on the ground of serious misconduct, and that with the consent of the National Service officer. Where a worker leaves his work without the consent of the National Service officer, this officer may issue a direction to compel the person to return to his work. Where a worker is discharged by his employer with the consent of the National Service officer the worker has the right of appeal to an appeal board. If the appeal board decides that the dismissal was unjustified, the National Service

officer may direct that worker back to his employment, and the employer is compelled to accept him back.
That machinery has worked very well on the whole, and very few employers have made complaints about it. They have loyally accepted back without any trouble any worker whom they have dismissed but whom the National Service officer has directed back to them. Where the employer is a Government factory, agency factory or shadow factory, there is no obligation to accept the direction of the National Service officer, even though the worker has appealed successfully to an appeal board against his dismissal and the National Service officer has requested that the worker should be taken back. The result is that, in the case of Government-owned factories, shadow factories and agency factories, the Essential Work Order has become a one-sided matter. The National Service officer has been able to compel a man to keep to his employment or to go back to his employment. On the other hand, he is not able to compel an employer who happens to be the Government to take back a man who has been unjustly dismissed.

It being the hour appointed for the interruption of Business, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Pym.]

Mr. Silkin: There have been a number of cases where men have been dismissed, have successfully appealed to an appeal board, where the Government factory has been requested to take the man back, and the superintendents or managers of the factory have refused to do so. I would like to make two points clear. One is that even after a successful appeal the National Service officer is under no obligation to issue a direction for the return of the man to work. He still has discretion, and there have been cases in which, although the appeal has been successful, the National Service officer has said in his discretion that he considers it would be inadvisable for the man to be returned to his employment. I make no complaint about those cases, but cases I do complain of are where the man has been dismissed, a man employed in a Government factory,


has appealed to an appeal board and has been successful, and the National Service officer has requested that the man should be returned to his employment, and the managers or superintendents of the factory have refused to accept him.
I understand the position is that one cannot issue a direction against a Minister of the Crown, who is, of course, the nominal employer in Government factories, and that there is, in fact, an arrangement by which Ministers bind themselves to accept a request from the National Service officer. Generally speaking, I believe that Ministers have accepted such a request and have taken men back to work. But there are a number of cases, mainly of factories under the Ministry of Supply, in which the undertaking has not been duly honoured and carried out, and I would like to make a request, therefore, to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to give the House an assurance that he will see to it that these undertakings are carried out in all cases, and that where a successful appeal has been made by a worker, and a National Service officer requests that he should be taken back to his employment, in all cases he will see to it that that worker is returned to his employment. I do not think I need stress the hardship otherwise of the position by which the man is bound but the employer is not bound, merely because the employer happens to be the Crown. I hope he will find it possible to give a satisfactory assurance on that point.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Tomlinson): I should not like it to be thought that because this question has been raised, and raised in the very friendly manner in which it has been, Government Departments were not co-operating in the carrying out of this Order, and there were any number of cases in which the circumstances described by my hon. Friend have arisen. Legally, as I tried to point out when this question was first raised, the Essential Work Order cannot bind the Crown. I do not think I need to argue that with my hon. Friend. He knows it better than I do, and could probably give better reasons for it not being possible to bind the Crown than I, with my

experience, could. But I did say on that occasion, and I repeat now, that when a Government establishment is scheduled under the Order no legal obligations are imposed on the management, nor can the National Service officer give them directions to reinstate the worker, but in practice we have agreed with the Government Departments concerned that when we schedule under the Orders any of their establishments, they will see to it that the management observes the provisions as if it were bound by the Order. Although the same machinery cannot be used for enforcing the terms of the Order in the case of the Crown, the understanding is that they will be bound by the agreement. Government Departments have been, if anything, more scrupulous in observing this moral obligation than some private employers have been in observing their legal obligations under the Order. There have been occasional difficulties with local officials of Departments perhaps, but immediately the matters in question were brought to the notice of their headquarters steps were taken to put things right.
The question of the discretionary powers of the Minister has been raised. I am glad my hon. Friend says that he does not object to that discretion being used. Everybody will realise that there are cases in connection with war industry in which even a local appeal board could not be told exactly what the circumstances were. I do not know of any case in which a request has been made on the lines of the Order and the Department has not carried out the request. If my hon. Friend will send me particulars of any cases, in order that I might satisfy myself whether that has happened, I am prepared not only to look into them but to have this matter threshed out with the Departments concerned. I can give him the assurance that has been given at all times, that where there is no other question involved than that of the application of the Order which is applicable to an ordinary firm, it is not only the policy but the desire of the Minister that the Crown should accept it, as they expect the loyal private employer to do.

Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put, and agreed to.